SELECTIONS 



FROM THE 



WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 



SELECTIONS 



FEOM THE 



WORKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR, ^^w 

9cr\A Connor. 



WITH 

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR 
AND HIS WRITINGS. 



4 



BOSTON : 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1865. 










University Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



/ 



///f 



CONTENTS. 

» ■ 

PAGE 

Life of Jeremy Taylor 7 

The Day of Judgment 31 

Prayer • 55 

Pardon of Sin 70 

Godly Fear 72 

Human Weakness 78 

Faith 79 

Lukewarmness and Zeal 81 

The Epicure's Feast 87 

Intemperance 98 

Marriage 107 

The Atheist e , 131 

TheT'i-ue 133 

lie Talk ., 135 

esting 138 

Jommon Swearing 140 

battery 142 

Consolation . 143 

The Spirit of Grace 146 

The Decline of Christendom 150 

The Glory of God 150 

Death-bed Eepentance 152 

Deceitfulness of the Heart 154 

Faith and Patience 162 

The Humiliation of Christ 165 

Triumphs of Christianity 168 

Afflictions of the Church 172 

The Righteous Oppressed 174 

Real and Apparent Happiness 178 

Martyrdom 180 

The Progress of Souls ... 183 



/3Y 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The Inexperienced Christian 184 

The Sorrows of the Godly 185 

The Goodness of God 186 

The Danger of Prosperity 189 

Mercy and Judgment 190 

Primitive Piety 194 

Growth in Grace 196 

Growth in Sin 199 

Worldly Possessions 205 

Excellence of the Soul 214 

The Rewards of Virtue 216 

Religion and Government 218 

Hypocrisy 220 

Christ's Disciples 222 

The Miracles of the Divine Mercy 223 

National Adversity 232 

Evangelical Righteousness 234 

Watchfulness 236 

Pity 238 

The Hope of Man 239 

The Resurrection 240 

Resurrection of Sinners 244 

The Divine Bounty 245 

Sympathy 250 

Restraint of the Passions 250 

The Soul's Memory 252 

Female Piety 253 

The Shortness of Life 257 

The Miseries of Life 271 

Reason and Discretion 277 

Charity 280 

Time 282 

Immoderate Grief. 282 

The Ephesian Matron 284 

Education 288 

Advantages of Sickness 290 

Daily Prayer 293 

Toleration 294 

The Presence of God 296 

Quirt Religion 302 

The Imitation of Christ 304 



SOME ACCOUNT 

OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 

JEREMY TAYLOR* 



Jeremy Taylor was the son of a barber, and 
was born at Cambridge in the year 1613. He was 
brought up in the free-school there, and was ripe 
for the university before custom would allow of his 
admittance ; but by the time he was thirteen years 
old he was entered into Caius College. Had he 
lived among the ancient pagans, he had been ush- 
ered into the world with a miracle, and swans must 
have danced and sung at his birth ; and he must 
have been a great hero, and no less than the son of 
Apollo, the god of wisdom and eloquence.f 

He was a man long before he was of age, and 
knew little more of the state of childhood than its 
innocency and pleasantness. From the university, 
by that time he was Master of Arts, he removed to 

* This account consists chiefly of Dr. Rust's Sermon, preached 
at Taylor's funeral. For the minuter details the reader is refer- 
red to Eeber' l s Life of Taylor. 

f Anthony Wood, speaking of his birth, says, " Jeremy Tay- 
lor tumbled into the lap of the muses at Cambridge." 



8 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

London, and became public lecturer in the church 
of St. Paul's, where he preached to the admiration 
and astonishment of his auditory, and by his florid 
and youthful beauty, and sweet and pleasant air, and 
sublime and raised discourses, he made his hearers 
take him for some young angel, newly descended 
from the visions of glory. The fame of this new 
star, that outshone all the rest of the firmament, 
quickly came to the notice of the great Archbishop 
of Canterbury,* who would needs have him preach 
before him, which he performed not less to his won- 
der than satisfaction ; his discourse was beyond ex- 
ception and beyond imitation : yet the wise prelate 
thought him too young ; but the great youth hum- 
bly begged his Grace to pardon that fault, and prom- 
ised, if he lived, he would mend it. However, the 
grand patron of learning and ingenuity thought it 
for the advantage of the world, that such mighty 
parts should be afforded better opportunities of study 
and improvement than a course of constant preach- 
ing would allow of ; and to that purpose he placed 
him in All-Souls College, in Oxford ; where love and 
admiration still waited upon him : which, so long 
as there is any spark of ingenuity in the breasts 
of men, must needs be the inseparable attendants of 
so extraordinary a worth and sweetness. He had 
not been long here, before my Lord of Canterbury 
bestowed upon him the rectory of Uppingham in 
Rutlandshire, and soon after preferred him to be 
chaplain to King Charles the Martyr, of blessed and 
immortal memory. Thus were preferments heaped 
• Laud. 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 9 

upon him, but still less than his deserts ; and that 
not through the fault of his great masters, but be- 
cause the amplest honors and rewards were poor 
and inconsiderable compared with the greatness of 
his worth and merit. 

This great man had no sooner launched into the 
world, but a fearful tempest arose, and a barbarous 
and unnatural war disturbed a long and uninter- 
rupted peace and tranquillity, and brought all things 
into disorder and confusion. But his religion taught 
him to be loyal, and engaged him on his prince's 
side, whose cause and quarrel he always owned and 
maintained with a great courage and constancy: till 
at last he and his little fortune were shipwrecked in 
that great hurricane that overturned both Church 
and State. This fatal storm cast him ashore in a 
private corner of the world, and a tender Providence 
shrouded him under her wings, and the prophet was 
fed in the wilderness ; and his great worthiness pro- 
cured him friends, that supplied him with bread and 
necessaries. In this solitude he began to write those 
excellent Discourses, which are enough of them- 
selves to furnish a library, and will be famous to 
all succeeding generations for their greatness of 
wit, and profoundness of judgment, and richness of 
fancy, and clearness of expression, and copiousness 
of invention, and general usefulness to all the pur- 
poses of a Christian. And by these he soon got a 
great reputation among all persons of judgment and 
indifferency, and his name will grow greater still as 
the world grows better and wiser. 

When he had spent some years in this retirement, 



10 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

it pleased God to visit his family with sickness, and 
to take to himself the dear pledges of his favor, — 
three sons of great hopes and expectations, — within 
the space of two or three months : and though he 
had learned a quiet submission unto the divine will, 
yet the affliction touched him so sensibly, that it 
made him desirous to leave the country ; and going 
to London, he there met my Lord Conway, a person 
of great honor and generosity, who making him a 
kind proffer, the good man embraced it; and that 
brought him over into Ireland, and settled him at 
Portmore, a place made for study and contemplation, 
which he, therefore, dearly loved ; and here he wrote 
his u Cases of Conscience," a book that is able alone 
to give its author immortality. 

By this time the wheel of Providence brought 
about the king's happy restoration, and there began 
a new world, and the Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters, and out of a confused chaos 
brought forth beauty and order, and all the three 
nations were inspired with a new life, and became 
drunk with an excess of joy : among the rest this 
loyal subject went over to congratulate the prince 
and people's happiness, and bear a part in the uni- 
versal triumph. 

It was not long ere his sacred Majesty began the 
settlement of the Church, and the great Doctor Jer- 
emy Taylor was resolved upon for the bishopric of 
Down and Connor ; and not long after, Dromore was 
added to it ; and it was but reasonable that the king 
and Church should consider their champion, and re- 
ward the pains and sntlcrinirs he underwent in the 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 11 

defence of their cause and honor. With what care 
and faithfulness he discharged his office, we are all 
his witnesses ; what good rules and directions he 
gave his clergy, and how he taught us the practice 
of them by his own example. Upon his coming 
over bishop, he was made a privy-counsellor ; and 
the University of Dublin gave him their testimony 
by recommending him for their vice-chancellor: 
which honorable office he kept to his dying day. 

During his being in this see, he wrote several ex- 
cellent discourses, particularly his " Dissuasive from 
Popery," which was received by a general approba- 
tion ; and a " Vindication * of it from some imper- 
tinent cavillers, that pretend to answer books when 
there is nothing towards it more than the very title- 
page. This great prelate improved his talent with 
a mighty industry, and managed his stewardship 
rarely well ; and his Master, when he called for his 
accounts, found him busy and at his work, and em- 
ployed upon an excellent subject, "A Discourse 
upon the Beatitudes " ; which, if finished, would 
have been of great use to the world, and solve most 
of the cases of conscience that occur to a Christian 
in all the varieties of states and conditions. But 
the all-wise God hath ordained it otherwise, and 
hath called home his good servant, to give him a 
portion in that blessedness that Jesus Christ hath 
promised to all his faithful disciples and followers. 

Thus having given you a brief account of his life, 
I know you will now expect a character of his per- 
son ; but, I foresee, it will befall him as it does all 
glorious subjects that are but disparaged by a coxa- 



12 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

mendation. One thing I am secure of, that I shall 
not be thought to speak hyperboles ; for the subject 
can hardly be reached by any expressions ; for he 
was none of God's ordinary works, but his endow- 
ments were so many, and so great, as really made 
him a miracle. 

Nature had befriended him much in his constitu- 
tion ; for he was a person of most sweet and oblig- 
ing humor, of great candor and ingenuity ; and there 
was so much of salt and fineness of wit, and pretti- 
ness of address, in his familiar discourses, as made 
his conversation have all the pleasantness of a com- 
edy, and all the usefulness of a sermon. His soul 
was made up of harmony ; and he never spake but 
he charmed his hearer, not only with the clearness 
of his reason, but all his words, and his very tone 
and cadences, were strangely musical. 

But that which did most of all captivate and en- 
ravish, was, the gayety and richness of fancy ; for 
he had much in him of that natural enthusiasm that 
inspires all great poets and orators ; and there was a 
generous ferment in his blood and spirits that set his 
fancy bravely a- work, and made it swell and teem 
and become pregnant to such degrees of luxuriantly 
as nothing but the greatness of his wit and judg- 
ment could have kept it within due bounds and 
measures. 

And, indeed, it was a rare mixture, and a single 
instance) hardly to be found in an age: for the great 
trier of wits has told us, that there is a peculiar and 
several complexion required for wit, and judgment, 
and fancy ; and yet you might have found all these 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 13 

in this great personage in their eminency and per- 
fection. But that which made his wit and judgment 
so considerable, was the largeness and freedom of 
his spirit ; for truth is plain and easy to a mind dis- 
entangled from superstition and prejudice. He was 
one of the Eclectics, a sort of brave philosophers 
that Laertius speaks of, that did not addict them- 
selves to any particular sect, but ingenuously sought 
for truth among all the wrangling schools ; and they 
found her miserably torn and rent to pieces, and 
parcelled into rags, by the several contending parties, 
and so disfigured and misshapen that it was hard to 
know her ; but they made a shift to gather up her 
scattered limbs, which, as soon as they came to- 
gether, by a strange sympathy and connaturalness, 
presently united into a lovely and beautiful body. 
This was the spirit of this great man ; he weighed 
men's reasons and not their names, and was not 
scared with the ugly visors men usually put upon 
persons they hate and opinions they dislike, — not 
affrighted with the anathemas and execrations of an 
infallible chair, which he looked upon only as bug- 
bears to terrify weak and childish minds. He con- 
sidered that it is not likely any one party should 
wholly engross truth to themselves ; that obedience 
is the only way to true knowledge ; which is an ar- 
gument that he has managed rarely well in that 
excellent sermon of his, which he calls " Via Intel- 
ligently " ; that God always, and only, teaches do- 
cible and ingenuous minds, that are willing to hear 
and ready to obey according to their light ; that it 
is impossible a pure, humble, resigned, God-like 



14 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

soul should be kept out of heaven, whatever mis- 
takes it might be subject to in this state of mortality; 
that the design of heaven is not to fill men's heads 
and feed their curiosities, but to better their hearts 
and mend their lives. Such considerations as these 
made him impartial in his disquisitions, and give a 
due allowance to the reasons of his adversary, and 
contend for truth, and not for victory. 

And now you will easily believe that an ordinary 
diligence would be able to make great improvements 
upon such a stock of parts and endowments ; but to 
these advantages of nature and excellency of his 
spirit he added an indefatigable industry, and God 
gave a plentiful benediction: for there were very 
few kinds of learning but he was a " Mystes," and a 
great master in them ; he was a rare humanist, and 
hugely versed in all the polite arts of learning; and 
had thoroughly concocted all the ancient moralists, 
Greek and Roman, poets and orators ; and was not 
unacquainted with the refined wits of later ages, 
whether French or Italian. 

But he had not only the accomplishments of a 
gentleman, but so universal were his parts, that they 
were proportioned to everything; and though his 
spirit and humor were made up of smoothness and 
gentleness, yel he could bear with the harshness and 
roughness erf the schools; and was not unseen in 
their suhtiltics and spinosities, and, upon occasion, 
could make them serve his purpose ; and yet, I be- 
lieve, he thought many of them very near akin to 
the famOQfl Kniirht <le la Mancha, and would make 
sport sometimes with the romantic sophistry and 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 15 

fantastic adventures of school-errantry. His skill 
was great, both in the civil and canon law, and casu- 
istical divinity; and he was a rare conductor of 
souls, and knew how to counsel and to advise, — to 
solve difficulties, and determine cases, and quiet 
consciences. And he was no novice in Mr. I. S.'s 
new science of controversy ; but could manage an 
argument and repartees with a strange dexterity ; 
he understood what the several parties in Christen- 
dom have to say for themselves, and could plead 
their cause to better advantage than any advocate 
of their tribe : and when he had done, he could con- 
fute them too, and show that better arguments 
than ever they could produce for themselves would 
afford no sufficient ground for their fond opinions. 

It would be too great a task to pursue his accom- 
plishments through the various kinds of literature. 
I shall content myself to add only his great acquaint- 
ance with the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and 
the doctors of the first and purest ages both of the 
Greek and Latin Church ; which he has made use 
of against the Romanists, to vindicate the Church of 
England from the challenge of innovation, and prove 
her to be truly ancient, catholic, and apostolical. 

But religion and virtue is the crown of all other 
accomplishments ; and it was the glory of this great 
man to be thought a Christian, and whatever you 
added to it, he looked upon as a term of diminution ; 
and he was a zealous son of the Church of Eng- 
land ; but that was because he judged her (and 
with great reason) a Church the most purely Chris- 
tian of any in the world. In his younger years he 



16 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

met with some assaults from popery ; and the high 
pretensions of their religious orders were very ac- 
commodate to his devotional temper : but he was 
always so much master of himself, that he would 
never be governed by anything but reason, and the 
evidence of truth, which engaged him in the study 
of those controversies ; and to how good purpose, 
the world is by this time a sufficient witness : but 
the longer and the more he considered, the worse he 
liked the Roman cause, and became at last to cen- 
sure them with some severity ; but I confess I have 
so great an opinion of his judgment, and the chari- 
tableness of his spirit, that I am afraid he did not 
think worse of them than they deserve. 

But religion is not a matter of theory and ortho- 
dox notions ; and it is not enough to believe aright, 
but we must practise accordingly ; and to master 
our passions, and to make a right use of that power 
that God has given us over our own actions, is a 
greater glory than all other accomplishments that 
can adorn the mind of man ; and, therefore, I shall 
close my character of this great personage with a 
touch upon some of those virtues for which his 
memory will be precious to all posterity. He was a 
person of great humility ; and notwithstanding his 
stupendous parts, and learning, and eminency of 
place, he had nothing in him of pride and humor, 
but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, 
and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea, 
Co the i m pertinencies of the meanest persons. His 
humility was euupled with an extraordinary piety ; 
and, I believe, he spent the greatest part of his time 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 17 

in heaven ; his solemn hours of prayer took up a 
considerable portion of his life ; and we are not to 
doubt but he had learned of St. Paul to pray con- 
tinually ; and that occasional ejaculations, and fre- 
quent aspirations and emigrations of his soul after 
God, made up the best part of his devotions. But 
he was not only a good man Godward, but he was 
come to the top of St. Peter's gradation, and to all 
his other virtues added a large and diffusive charity : 
and whoever compares his plentiful incomes with 
the inconsiderable estate he left at his death, will be 
easily convinced that charity was steward for a great 
proportion of his revenue. But the hungry that he 
fed, and the naked that he clothed, and the dis- 
tressed that he supplied, and the fatherless that he 
provided for, — the poor children that he put to ap- 
prentice, and brought up at school, and maintained 
at the university, — will now sound a trumpet to that 
charity which he dispersed with his right hand, but 
would not suffer his left hand to have any knowl- 
edge of it. 

To sum up all in a few words : this great prelate 
had the good-humor of a gentleman, the eloquence 
of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the acuteness of a 
schoolman, the profoundness of a philosopher, the 
wisdom of a chancellor, the sagacity of a prophet, 
the reason of an angel, and the piety of a saint ; he 
had devotion enough for a cloister, learning enough 
for a university, and wit enough for a college of 
virtuosi ; and had his parts and endowments been 
parcelled out among his poor clergy that he left be- 
hind him, it would, perhaps, have made one of the 
2 



18 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

best dioceses in the world. But, alas ! " Our father ! 
our father ! the horses of our Israel, and the chariot 
thereof! " he is gone, and has carried his mantle and 
his spirit along with him up to heaven ; and the 
sons of the prophets have lost all their beauty and 
lustre, which they enjoyed only from the reflection 
of his excellencies, which were bright and radiant 
enough to cast a glory upon a whole order of men. 
But the sun of this our world, after many attempts 
to break through the crust of an earthly body, is at 
last swallowed up in the great vortex of eternity, 
and there all his macidce are scattered and dis- 
solved, and he is fixed in an orb of glory, and shines 
among his brethren stars, that, in their several ages, 
gave light to the world, and turned many souls unto 
righteousness ; and we that are left behind, though 
we can never reach his perfections, must study to 
imitate his virtues, that we may at last come to sit 
at his feet in the mansions of glory. 

After a short illness of ten days, this man of ex- 
traordinary gifts and attainments finished his earthly 
course, on the 13th of August, 1667, at the age of 
fifty-five years. 

The critical remarks that follow are from the pen 
of Bishop lleber. 

The comeliness of Taylor's person lias been often 
noticed, and he himself appears to have been not 
insensible of it. Few authors have so frequently 
introduced their own portraits, in different characters 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 19 

and attitudes, as ornaments to their printed works. 
So far as we may judge from these, he appears to 
have been above the middle size, strongly and hand- 
somely proportioned, with his hair long and grace- 
fully curling on his cheeks, large dark eyes, full of 
sweetness, an aquiline nose, and an open and intel- 
ligent countenance. 

Of Taylor's domestic habits and private character 
much is not known, but all which is known is ami- 
able. " Love," as well as " admiration," is said to 
have " waited on him " in Oxford. In Wales, and 
amid the mutual irritation and violence of civil and 
religious hostility, we find him conciliating, when a 
prisoner, the favor of his keepers, at the same time 
that he preserved, undiminished, the confidence and 
esteem of his own party. Laud, in the height of 
his power and full-blown dignity; Charles, in his 
deepest reverses ; Hatton, Vaughan, and Conway, 
amid the tumults of civil war ; and Evelyn, in the 
tranquillity of his elegant retirement ; seem alike to 
have cherished his friendship, and coveted his soci- 
ety. The same genius which extorted the com- 
mendation of Jeanes, for the variety of its research 
and the vigor of its argument, was also an object of 
interest and affection with the young and rich and 
beautiful Katharine Philips ; and few writers, who 
have expressed their opinions so strongly, and, 
sometimes, so unguardedly as he has done, have 
lived and died with so much praise and so little cen- 
sure. Much of this felicity may be probably re- 
ferred to an engaging appearance and a pleasing 
manner; but its cause must be sought, in a still 



20 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

greater degree, in the evident kindliness of heart, 
which, if the uniform tenor of a man's writings is 
any index to his character, must have distinguished 
him from most men living ; in a temper, to all ap- 
pearance warm, but easily conciliated ; and in that 
which, as it is one of the least common, is of all 
dispositions the most attractive, not merely a neglect, 
but a total forgetfulness of all selfish feeling. It is 
this, indeed, which seems to have constituted the 
most striking feature of his character. Other men 
have been, to judge from their writings and their 
lives, to all appearance, as religious, as regular in 
their devotions, as diligent in the performance of all 
which the laws of God or man require from us ; 
but with Taylor his duty seems to have been a de- 
light, his piety a passion. His faith was the more 
vivid in proportion as his fancy was more intensely 
vigorous ; with him the objects of his hope and rev- 
erence were scarcely unseen or future ; his imagi- 
nation daily conducted him to " diet with gods," and 
elevated him to the same height above the world, 
and the same nearness to ineffable things, which 
Milton ascribes to his allegorical " cherub Contem- 
plation." 

Of the broader and more general lines of Taylor s 
literary character a very few observations may be 
sufficient. The greatness of his attainments, and 
the powers of his mind, are evident in all his writ- 
ings, and to the least attentive of his readers. It is 
hard to point out a branch of learning, or of scien- 
tific pursuit, to which he does not occasionally al- 
lude ; or any author of eminence, either ancient or 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 21 

modern, with whom he does not evince himself ac- 
quainted. And it is certain, that, as very few other 
writers have equal riches to display, so he is apt to 
display his stores with a lavish exuberance which 
the severer taste of Hooker or of Barrow would 
have condemned as ostentatious, or rejected as cum- 
bersome. Yet be is far from a mere reporter of 
other men's arguments, — a textuary of fathers and 
schoolmen, — who resigns his reason into the hands 
of his predecessors, and who employs no other in- 
strument for convincing his readers than a length- 
ened string of authorities. His familiarity with the 
stores of ancient and modern literature is employed 
to illustrate more frequently than to establish his 
positions ; and may be traced, not so much in direct 
citation, (though of this, too, there is, perhaps, more 
than sufficient,) as in the abundance of his allusions, 
the character of his imagery, and the occurrence of 
terms of foreign derivation, or employed in a foreign 
and unusual meaning. 

It is thus that he more than once refers to obscure 
stories in ancient writers, as if they were, of neces- 
sity, as familiar to all his readers as himself; that he 
talks of " poor Attilius Aviola," or " the Lybian 
lion," that, "brake loose into his wilderness and 
killed two Eoman boys " ; as if the accidents of 
which he is speaking had occurred in London a few 
weeks before. It is thus that, in warning an Eng- 
lish (or a Welsh) auditory against the brief term of 
mortal luxury, he enumerates a long list of ancient 
dainties, and talks of " the condited bellies of the 
Bcarus," and " drinking of healths by the numeral 



22 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

letters of Philenium's name." It is thus that one of 
his strangest and harshest similes, where he com- 
pares an ill-sorted marriage to " going to bed with a 
dragon," is the suggestion of a mind familiar with 
those lamice with female faces and extremities like 
a serpent, of whose enticements strange stories are 
told, in the old demonologies. And thus that he 
speaks of the " justice," instead of the " juice " of 
fishes ; of an " excellent " pain ; of the gospel being 
preached, not " to the common people," but to 
u idiots " ; and of " serpents," (meaning " creeping 
things,") devouring our bodies in the grave. It is 
this which gives to many of his most striking passages 
the air of translations, and which, in fact, may well 
lead us to believe, that some of them are indeed the 
selected members of different and disjointed classics. 
On the other hand, few circumstances can be 
named, which so greatly contribute to the richness 
of his matter, the vivacity of his style, and the har- 
mony of his language, as those copious drafts on all 
which is wise, or beautiful, or extraordinary, in an- 
cient writers or in foreign tongues ; and the very 
singularity and hazard of his phrases has not unfre- 
quently a peculiar charm, which the observers of a 
tamer and more ordinary diction can never hope to 
inspire. One of these archaisms, and a very grace- 
ful one, is the introduction of the comparative de- 
gree, simply and without its contrasted quantity, of 
which he has made a very frequent use, but which 
he has never employed without producing aa effect 
of striking beauty. Thus, he tells us "of a more 
healthy sorrow " ; of " the air's looser garment," or 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 23 

? the wilder fringes of the fire " ; which, though in 
a style purely English they would be probably re- 
placed by positive or superlative epithets, could 
hardly suffer this change without a considerable 
detraction from the spirit and raciness of the sen- 
tence. The same observation may apply to the use 
of " prevaricate," in an active sense ; to " the terri- 
er ation of ruder handling " ; and to many similar 
expressions, which, if unusual, are at least expres- 
sive and sonorous, and which could hardly be re- 
placed by the corresponding vernacular phrases 
without a loss of brevity or beauty. Of such ex- 
pressions as these it is only necessary to observe 
that their use, to be effectual or allowable, should be 
more discreet, perhaps, and infrequent, than is the 
case in the works of Taylor. 

I have already noticed the familiarity which he 
himself displays, — and which he apparently expected 
to find, in an almost equal degree, in his readers or 
hearers, — with the facts of history, the opinions of 
philosophy, the productions of distant climates, and 
the customs of distant nations. Nor, in the allusions 
or examples which he extracts from such sources, is 
he always attentive to the weight of authority, or 
the probability of the fact alleged. The age, in- 
deed, in which he lived was, in many respects, a 
credulous one. The discoveries which had been 
made by the enterprise of travellers, and the un- 
skilful and as yet immature efforts of the new phi- 
losophy, had extended the knowledge of mankind 
just far enough to make them know that much yet 
remained uncertain, and that many things were true 



24 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

which their fathers had held for impossible. Such 
absence of skepticism is, of all states of the human 
mind, most favorable to the increase of knowledge ; 
but for the preservation of truths already acquired, 
and the needful separation of truth from falsehood, 
it is necessary to receive the testimony of men, how- 
ever positive, with more of doubt than Boyle, Wil- 
kins, or even Bacon, appear to have been accus- 
tomed to exercise. 

But Taylor was anything rather than a critical 
inquirer into facts (however strange) of history or 
philosophy. If such alleged facts suited his pur- 
pose, he received them without examination, and 
retailed them without scruple ; and we therefore 
read in his works of such doubtful or incredible 
examples as that of a single city containing fifteen 
millions of inhabitants ; of the Neapolitan manna, 
which failed as soon as it was subjected to a tax ; 
and of the monument " nine furlongs high," which 
was erected by Ninus, the Assyrian. Nor in his 
illustrations, even where they refer to matters of 
daily observation or of undoubted truth, is he al- 
ways attentive to accuracy. 

" When men sell a mule," he tells us, " they speak 
of the horse that begat him, not of the ass that bore 
him." It is singular that he should forget that, of 
mules, the ass is always the father. What follows 
is still more extraordinary, inasmuch as it shows a 
forgetfulness of the circumstances of two of the 
most illustrious events in the Old Testament. " We 
should fight " says he, " as Gideon did, with three 
hundred hardy brave fellows that would stand 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 25 

against all violence, rather than to make a noise 
with rams' horns and broken pitchers, like the men 
at the siege of Jericho." Had he thought twice, he 
must have recollected that " making a noise " was 
at least one principal part of the service required 
from Gideon's troops, and that the " broken pitch- 
ers " were their property alone, and a circumstance 
of which the narrative of the siege of Jericho affords 
not the least mention. An occasional occurrence of 
such errors is indeed unavoidable ; and, irrelevant 
as some of his illustrations are, and uncertain as 
may be the truth of others, there is none, perhaps, 
of his readers who would wish those illustrations 
fewer, to which his works owe so much of their 
force, their impressiveness, and their entertainment. 
1 As a reason ergj^do not jhjnkjrim matchless. He is, 
indeed, always acute, and, in practical questions, 
almost always sensible. His knowledge was so vast, 
that on every point of discussion he set out with 
great advantage, as being familiar with all the neces- 
sary preliminaries of the question, and with every 
ground or argument which had been elicited on 
either side by former controversies. But his own 
understanding was rather inventive than critical. 
( He never failed to find a plausible argument for any 
Vopinion which he himself entertained ; he was as 
ready with plausible objections to every argument 
which might be advanced by his adversaries ; and 
he was completely acquainted with the whole detail 
of controversial attack and defence, and of every 
weapon of eloquence, irony, or sarcasm, which was 
most proper to persuade or to silence. But his own 



/ 



26 LIFE AND WRITINGS 

views were sometimes indistinct, and often hasty. 
His opinions, therefore, though always honest and 
ardent, he had sometimes occasion, in the course of 
his life, to change ; and instances have been already 
pointed out, not only where his reasoning is incon- 
clusive, but where positions ardently maintained in 
some of his writings are doubted or denied in others. 
But it should be remembered how much he wrote 
during a life in itself not long, and in its circum- 
stances by no means favorable to accurate research 
or calm reasoning. Nor can it be a subject of sur- 
prise that a poor and oppressed man should be 
sometimes hurried too far in opposition to his per- 
secutors, or that one who had so little leisure for the 
correction of his works should occasionally be found 
to contradict or repeat himself. 

I have already had occasion to point out the ver- 
satility of his talents, which, though uniformly ex- 
erted on subjects appropriate to his profession, are 
distinguished, where such weapons are needed, by 
irony and caustic humor, as well as by those milder 
and sublimer beauties of style and sentiment which 
are his more familiar and distinguishing character- 
istics. Yet to such weapons he has never recourse 
wantonly or rashly. Nor do I recollect any instance 
in which he has employed them in the cause of pri- 
vate or personal, or even polemical hostility, or any 
occasion where their fullest severity was not justi- 
fied and called for by crimes, by cruelty, by inter- 
ested superstition, or base and sordid hypocrisy. ^ 
His satire was always kept in check by the depth 
and fervor of his religious feelings, his charity, and 



OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 27 

his humility. It is on devotional and moral subjects, 
however, that the peculiar character of his mind is 
most, and most successfully, developed. To this 
service he devotes his most glowing language; to 
this his aptest illustrations ; his thoughts, and his 
words at once burst into a flame, when touched by 
the coals of this altar ; and whether he describes the 
duties, or dangers, or hopes of man, or the mercy, 
power, and justice of the Most High, ' — whether he 
exhorts or instructs his brethren, or offers up his 
supplications in their behalf to the common Father 
of all, — his conceptions and his expressions belong 
to the loftiest and most sacred description of poetry, 
of which they only want, what they cannot be said 
to need, the name and the metrical arrangement. 

It is this distinctive excellence, still more than the 
other qualifications of learning and logical acute- 
ness, which has placed him, even in that age of 
gigantic talent, on an eminence superior to any of 
his immediate contemporaries ; which has exempted 
him from the comparative neglect into which the 
dry and repulsive learning of Andrews and Sander- 
son has fallen ; which has left behind the acute- 
ness of Hales, and the imaginative and copious elo- 
quence of Bishop Hall, at a distance hardly less than 
the cold elegance of Clarke, and the dull good sense 
of Tillotson ; and has seated him, by the almost 
unanimous estimate of posterity, on the same lofty 
elevation with Hooker and with Barrow. 

Of such a triumvirate, who shall settle the prece- 
dence ? Yet it may, perhaps, be not far from the 
truth, to observe, that Hooker claims the foremost 



28 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 

rank in sustained and classic dignity of style, in 
political and pragmatical wisdom ; that to Barrow 
the praise must be assigned of the closest and the 
clearest views, and of a taste the most controlled 
and chastened ; but that in imagination, in interest, 
in that which more properly and exclusively deserves 
the name of genius, Taylor is to be placed before 
either. The first awes most, the second convinces 
most, the third persuades and delights most ; and 
(according to the decision of one * whose own rank 
among the ornaments of English literature yet re- 
mains to be determined by posterity) Hooker is the 
object of our reverence, Barrow of our admiration, 
and Jeremy Taylor of our love. 

* Dr. Parr. 



SELECTIONS 



JEREMY TAYLOR. 



SELECTIONS. 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

TTIRTUE and vice are so essentially distin- 
* guished, and the distinction is so necessary 
to be observed in order to the well-being of 
men in private and in societies, that, to divide 
them in themselves, and to separate them by 
sufficient notices, and to distinguish them by 
rewards, hath been designed by all laws, 
by the sayings of wise men, by the order of 
things, by their proportions to good or evil. 
And the expectations of men have been framed 
accordingly ; that virtue may have a proper 
seat in the will and in the affections, and may 
become amiable by its own excellency and its 
appendant blessing; and that vice may be as 
natural an enemy to a man, as a wolf to the 
lamb, and as darkness to light, — destructive of 
its being, and a contradiction of its nature. 
But it is not enough that all the world hath 
armed itself against vice, and, by all that is 
wise and sober among men, hath taken the 



32 THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 

part of virtue, adorning it with glorious appel- 
latives, encouraging it by rewards, entertaining 
it by sweetness, and commanding it by edicts, 
fortifying it with defensatives, and twining with 
it in all artificial compliances. All this is short 
of man's necessity ; for this will, in all modest 
men, secure their actions in theatres and high- 
ways, in markets and churches, before the eye 
of judges, and in the society of witnesses : but 
the actions of closets and chambers, the designs 
and thoughts of men, their discourses in dark 
places, and the actions of retirements and of 
the night, are left indifferent to virtue or to 
vice ; and of these, as man can take no cog- 
nizance, so he can make no coercitive ; and 
therefore above one half of human actions is 
by the laws of man left unregarded and un- 
provided for. And besides this, there are some 
men who are bigger than laws, and some are 
bigger than judges ; and some judges have 
lessened themselves by fear and cowardice, by 
bribery and flattery, by iniquity and compli- 
ance ; and where they have not, yet they have 
notices but of few causes. And there are 
some sins so popular and universal, that to 
punish them is either impossible or intolerable; 
and to question such, would betray the weak- 
ness of the public rods and axes, and represent 
the sinner to be stronger than the power that 
is appointed to be his bridle. And after all 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 33 

this, we find sinners so prosperous that they 
escape, so potent that they fear not ; and sin is 
made safe when it grows great, 

Facere omnia sseve 

Non impune licet, nisi dum facis 

and innocence is oppressed, and the poor cries, 
and he hath no helper, and he is oppressed, 
and he wants a patron. And for these and 
many other concurrent causes, if you reckon 
all the causes that come before all the judica- 
tories of the world, though the litigious are too 
many, and the matters of instance are intricate 
and numerous, yet the personal and criminal 
are so few, that of two thousand sins that cry 
aloud to God for vengeance, scarce two are 
noted by the public eye, and chastised by the 
hand of justice. It must follow from hence, 
that it is but reasonable, for the interest of 
virtue and the necessities of the world, that the 
private should be judged, and virtue should be 
tied upon the spirit, and the poor should be 
relieved, and the oppressed should appeal, and 
the noise of widows should be heard, and the 
saints should stand upright, and the cause that 
was ill-judged should be judged over again, and 
tyrants should be called to account, and our 
thoughts should be examined, and our secret 
actions viewed on all sides, and the infinite 
number of sins which escape here should not 
escape finally. And therefore God hath so 
3 



34 THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 

ordained it, that there shall be a day of doom, 
wherein all that are let alone by men shall be 
questioned by God, and every word and every 
action shall receive its just recompense of re- 
ward. " For we must all appear before the 
judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may 
receive the things done in his body, according 
to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad." 

" The things done in the body," so we com- 
monly read it; the things proper or due to 
the body, so the expression is more apt and 
proper ; for not only what is done by the body, 
but even the acts of abstracted understanding 
and volition, the acts of reflection and choice, 
acts of self-love and admiration, and whatever 
else can be supposed the proper and peculiar 
act of the soul or of the spirit, is to be ac- 
counted for at the day of judgment : and even 
these may be called " the things done in the 
body," because these are the acts of the man 
in the state of conjunction with the body. 
The words have in them no other difficulty or 
variety, but contain a great truth of the big- 
gest interest, and one of the most material 
constitutive articles of the whole religion, and 
the greatest endearment of our duty in the 
whole world. Things are so ordered by the 
great Lord of all the creatures, that what- 
soever we do or suffer shall be called to ac- 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 35 

count, and this account shall be exact, and the 
sentence shall be just, and the reward shall 
be great ; all the evils of the world shall be 
amended, and the injustices shall be repaid, 
and the divine Providence shall be vindicated, 
and virtue and vice shall forever be remarked 
by their separate dwellings and rewards. 

We will consider the persons that are to be 
judged, with the circumstances of our advan- 
tages or our sorrows. " We must all appear," 
even you, and I, and all the world ; kings and 
priests, nobles and learned, the crafty and the 
easy, the wise and the foolish, the rich and the 
poor, the prevailing tyrant and the oppressed 
party, shall all appear to receive their symbol. 
And this is so far from abating anything of its 
terror and our dear concernment, that it much 
increases it : for, although concerning precepts 
and discourses we are apt to neglect in par- 
ticular what is recommended in general, and 
in incidencies of mortality and sad events, the 
singularity of the chance heightens the appre- 
hension of the evil ; yet it is so by accident, 
and only in regard of our imperfection ; it be- 
ing an effect of self-love, or some little creep- 
ing envy which adheres too often to the un- 
fortunate and miserable; or else because the 
sorrow is apt to increase, by being apprehended 
to be a rare case, and a singular unworthiness 
in him who is afflicted, otherwise than is com- 



36 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

mon to the sons of men, companions of his sin, 
and brethren of his nature, and partners of his 
usual accidents. Yet in final and extreme 
events, the multitude of sufferers does not les- 
sen, but increase the sufferings ; and when the 
first day of judgment happened, that, I mean, 
of the universal deluge of waters upon the old 
world, the calamity swelled like the flood, and 
every man saw his friend perish, and the neigh- 
bors of his dwelling, and the relatives of his 
house, and the sharers of his joys, and yester- 
day's bride, and the new-born heir, the priest 
of the family, and the honor of the kindred, 
all dying or dead, drenched in water and the 
divine vengeance ; and then they had no place 
to flee unto, no man cared for their souls; they 
had none to go unto for counsel, no sanctuary 
high enough to keep them from the vengeance 
that rained down from heaven. And so it 
shall be at the day of judgment, when that 
world and this, and all that shall be born here- 
after, shall pass through the same Red Sea, 
and be all baptized with the same fire, and be 
involved in the same cloud, in which shall 
be tliunderings and terrors infinite. Every 
man's fear shall be increased by his neigh- 
bor's shrieks; and the amazement that all the 
world shall be in, shall unite as the sparks of a 
raging furnace into a globe of fire, and roll 
upon its own principle, and increase by direct 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 37 

appearances, and intolerable reflections. He 
that stands in a churchyard in the time of a 
great plague, and hears the passing-bell perpet- 
ually telling the sad stories of death, and sees 
crowds of infected bodies pressing to their 
graves, and others sick and tremulous, and 
death dressed up in all the images of sorrow 
round about him, is not supported in his spirit 
by the variety of his sorrow. And at dooms- 
day, when the terrors are universal, besides 
that it is in itself so much greater, because it 
can affright the whole world, it is also made 
greater by communication and a sorrowful in- 
fluence ; grief being then strongly infectious 
when there is no variety of state, but an entire 
kingdom of fear ; and amazement is the king 
of all our passions, and all the world its sub- 
jects. And that shriek must needs be terrible, 
when millions of men and women at the same 
instant shall fearfully cry out, and the noise 
shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, 
with the thunders of the dying and groaning 
heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world ; 
when the whole fabric of nature shall shake 
into dissolution and eternal ashes. But this 
general consideration may be heightened with 
four or five circumstances. 

1. Consider what an infinite multitude of 
angels and men and women shall then appear. 
It is a huge assembly, when the men of one 



38 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

kingdom, the men of one age in a single prov- 
ince, are gathered together into heaps and 
confusion of disorder. But then all kingdoms 
of all ages, all the armies that ever mustered, 
all the world that Augustus Caesar taxed, all 
those hundreds of millions that were slain in 
all the Roman wars from Numa's time till Italy- 
was broken into principalities and small exar- 
chates; all these, and all that can come into 
numbers, and that did descend from the loins 
of Adam, shall at once be represented. To 
which account if we add the armies of heaven, 
the nine orders of blessed spirits, and the in- 
finite numbers in every order, we may sup- 
pose the numbers fit to express the majesty of 
that God, and terror of that Judge, who is the 
Lord and Father of all that unimaginable mul- 
titude. Erit terror ingens tot simul tantorumque 
populorum* 

2. In this great multitude we shall meet all 
those who by their example and their holy 
precepts have, like tapers, enkindled with a 
beam of the sun of righteousness, enlightened 
us, and taught us to walk in the paths of jus- 
tice. There we shall see all those good men 
whom God sent to preach to us, and recall us 
from human follies and inhuman practices ; and 
when we espy the good man, that chid us for 
our last drunkenness or adulteries, it shall then 

* Florus. 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 39 

also be remembered, how we mocked at coun- 
sel, and were civilly modest at the reproof, but 
laughed when the man was gone, and accepted 
it for a religious compliment, and took our 
leaves, and went and did the same again. But 
then things shall put on another face, and that 
we smiled at here, and slighted fondly, shall 
then be the greatest terror in the world ; men 
shall feel that they once laughed at their own 
destruction, and rejected health, when it was 
offered by a man of God upon no other condi- 
tion but that they would be wise, and not be 
in love with death. Then they shall perceive, 
that, if they had obeyed an easy and a sober 
counsel, they had been partners of the same 
felicity which they see so illustrious upon the 
heads of those preachers whose work is with 
the Lord, and who by their life and doctrine 
endeavored to snatch the soul of their friend 
or relative from an intolerable misery. But 
he that sees a crown put upon their heads that 
give good counsel, and preach holy and severe 
sermons with designs of charity and piety, will 
also then perceive that God did not send 
preachers for nothing, on trifling errands and 
without regard ; but that work, which he 
crowns in them, he purposed should be effec- 
tive to us, persuasive to the understanding, and 
active upon our consciences. Good preach- 
ers by their doctrine, and all good men by 



40 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT, 

their lives, are the accusers of the disobedient ; 
and they shall rise up from their seats, and 
judge and condemn the follies of those who 
thought their piety to be want of courage, and 
their discourses pedantical, and their reproofs 
the priest's trade, but of no signification, be- 
cause they preferred moments before eternity. 
3. There in that great assembly shall be 
seen all those converts, who, upon easier terms, 
and fewer miracles, and a less experience, and 
a younger grace, and a seldomer preaching, 
and more unlikely circumstances, have suffered 
the work of God to prosper upon their spirits, 
and have been obedient to the heavenly call- 
ing. There shall stand the men of Nineveh, 
and they shall stand upright in judgment, for 
they at the preaching of one man in a less 
space than forty days returned unto the Lord 
their God ; but we have heard him call all our 
lives, and like the deaf adder stopped our ears 
against the voice of God's servants, charm they 
never so wisely. There shall appear the men 
of Capernaum, and the Queen of the South, 
and the men of Berea, and the first fruits of 
the Christian Church, and the holy martyrs, 
and shall proclaim to all the world, that it was 
not impossible to do the work of grace in the 
midst of all our weaknesses, and accidental 
disadvantages; and that the obedience of faith, 
and the labor of love, and tho contentions of 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 41 

chastity, and the severities of temperance and 
self-denial, are not such insuperable mountains, 
but that an honest and sober person may per- 
form them in acceptable degrees, if he have 
but a ready ear, and a willing mind, and an 
honest heart. And this scene of honest per- 
sons shall make the divine judgment upon 
sinners more reasonably and apparently just, 
in passing upon them the horrible sentence ; 
for why cannot we as well serve God in peace, 
as others served him in war ? Why cannot we 
love him as well, when he treats us sweetly, 
and gives us health and plenty, honors our fair 
fortunes, reputation, or contentedness, quietness 
and peace, as others did upon gibbets and un- 
der axes, in the hands of tormentors and in hard 
wildernesses, in nakedness and poverty, in the 
midst of all evil things and all sad discomforts ? 
Concerning this no answer can be made. 

4. But there is a worse sight than this yet, 
which, in that great assembly, shall distract our 
sight and amaze our spirits. There men shall 
meet the partners of their sins, and them that 
drank the round, when they crowned their 
heads with folly and forgetfulness, and their 
cups with wine and noises. There shall ye 
see that poor, perishing soul, whom thou didst 
tempt to adultery and wantonness, to drunken- 
ness or perjury, to rebellion or an evil interest, 
by power or craft, by witty discourses or deep 



42 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

dissembling, by scandal or a snare, by evil 
example or pernicious counsel, by malice or 
unwariness ; and when all this is summed up, 
and from the variety of its particulars is drawn 
into an uneasy load and a formidable sum, pos- 
sibly we may find sights enough to scare all 
our confidences, and arguments enough to press 
our evil souls into the sorrows of a most in- 
tolerable death. For, however we make now 
but light accounts and evil proportions concern- 
ing it, yet it will be a fearful circumstance of 
appearing, to see one, or two, or ten, or twenty 
accursed souls, despairing, miserable, infinitely 
miserable, roaring and blaspheming, and fear- 
fully cursing thee as the cause of its eternal 
sorrows. Thy lust betrayed and rifled her 
weak, unguarded innocence ; thy example made 
thy servant confident to fie, or to be perjured ; 
thy society brought a third into intemperance 
and the disguises of a beast : and when thou 
seest that soul, with whom thou didst sin, 
dragged into hell, well mayest thou fear to 
drink the dregs of thy intolerable potion. And 
most certainly, it is the greatest of evils to 
destroy a soul, for whom the Lord Jesus died, 
and to undo that grace which our Lord pur- 
chased witli so much sweat and blood, pains, 
and a mighty charity. And because very many 
sins iirc sins of society and confederation, — 
such are fornication, drunkenness, bribery, sim- 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 43 

ony, rebellion, schism, and many others, — it 
is a hard and a weighty consideration, what 
shall become of any one of us, who have 
tempted our brother or sister to sin and death. 
For though God hath spared our life, and they 
are dead, and their debt-books are sealed up till 
the day of account ; yet the mischief of our 
sin is gone before us, and it is like a murder, 
but more execrable : the soul is dead in tres- 
passes and sins, and sealed up to an eternal 
sorrow ; and thou shalt see, at doomsday, what 
damnable uncharitableness thou hast done. 
That soul that cries to those rocks to cover her, 
if it had not been for thy perpetual temptations, 
might have followed the Lamb in a white robe ; 
and that poor man, that is clothed with shame 
and flames of fire, would have shined in glory, 
but that thou didst force him to be partner of 
the baseness. And who shall pay for this loss ? 
A soul is lost by thy means ; thou hast defeated 
the holy purposes of the Lord's bitter passion 
by thy impurities ; and what shall happen to 
thee, by whom thy brother dies eternally ? 

Of all the considerations that concern this 
part of the horrors of doomsday, nothing can 
be more formidable than this, to such whom it 
does concern : and truly it concerns so many, 
and amongst so many perhaps some persons 
axe so tender, that it might affright their hopes, 
and discompose their industries and spiritual 



44 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

labors of repentance ; but that our most merci- 
ful Lord hath, in the midst of all the fearful 
circumstances of his second coming, interwo- 
ven this one comfort relating to this, which to 
my sense seems the most fearful and killing cir- 
cumstance : " Two shall be grinding at one 
mill ; the one shall be taken, and the other left: 
two shall be in a bed ; the one shall be taken, 
and the other left " ; that is, those who are con- 
federate in the same fortunes, and interests, and 
actions, may yet have a different sentence ; for 
an early and an active repentance will wash off 
this account, and put it upon the tables of the 
cross : and though it ought to make us diligent 
and careful, charitable and penitent, hugely 
penitent, even so long as we live ; yet when 
we shall appear together, there is a mercy 
that shall there separate us, who sometimes 
had blended each other in a common crime. 
Blessed be the mercies of God, who hath so 
carefully provided a fruitful shower of grace, 
to refresh the miseries and dangers of the 
greatest part of mankind. Thomas Aquinas 
was used to beg of God, that he might never 
be tempted from his low fortune to prelacies 
and dignities ecclesiastical ; and that his mind 
might never be discomposed or polluted with 
the love of any creature ; and that he might, 
by some instrument or other, understand the 
state of his deceased brother : and the story 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 45 

says, that he was heard in all. In him it was 
a great curiosity, or the passion and imperti- 
nencies of a useless charity to search after him, 
unless he had some other personal concernment 
than his relation of kindred. But truly, it 
would concern very many to be solicitous con- 
cerning the event of those souls, with whom 
we have mingled death and sin ; for many of 
those sentences, which have passed and decreed 
concerning our departed relatives, will concern 
us dearly, and we are bound in the same 
bundles, and shall be thrown into the same 
fires, unless we repent for our own sins, and 
double our sorrows for their damnation. 

5. We may consider that this infinite mul- 
titude of men and women, angels and devils, 
is not ineffective as a number in Pythagoras's 
tables, but must needs have influence upon 
every spirit that shall there appear : for the 
transactions of that court are not like orations 
spoken by a Grecian orator in the circles of 
his people, heard by them that crowd nearest 
him, or that sound limited by the circles of air, 
or the enclosure of a wall ; but everything is 
represented to every person. And then let it 
be considered, when thy shame and secret 
turpitude, thy midnight revels and secret hy- 
pocrisies, thy lustful thoughts and treacherous 
designs, thy falsehood to God and startings 
from thy holy promises, thy follies and impieties, 



46 TEE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 

shall be laid open before all the world, and 
that then shall be spoken by the trumpet of an 
archangel upon the house-top, the highest bat- 
tlements of heaven, all those filthy words and 
lewd circumstances which thou didst act se- 
cretly, thou wilt find that thou wilt have rea- 
son strangely to be ashamed. All the wise 
men in the world shall know how vile thou 
hast been ; and then consider with what con- 
fusion of face wouldst thou stand in the pres- 
ence of a good man and a severe, if peradven- 
ture he should suddenly draw thy curtain, and 
find thee in the sins of shame and lust ; it must 
be infinitely more, when God and all the angels 
of heaven and earth, all his holy myriads, and 
all his redeemed saints, shall stare and wonder 
at thy impurities and follies. 

I have read a story, that a young gentleman, 
being passionately by his mother dissuaded from 
entering into the severe courses of a religious 
and single life, broke from her importunity by 
saying, " Volo servare animam meam " : I am 
resolved by all means to save my soul. But 
when he had undertaken a rule with passion, 
he performed it carelessly and remissly, and 
was but lukewarm in his religion, and quickly 
proceeded to a melancholy and wearied spirit, 
and from thence to a sickness and the neigh- 
borhood of death : but, falling into an agony 
and a fantastic vision, dreamed that he saw 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 47 

himself summoned before God's angry throne, 
and from thence hurried into a place of tor- 
ments, where espying his mother, full of scorn 
she upbraided him with his former answer, and 
asked him, " Why he did not save his soul by 
all means, according as he undertook ? " But 
when the sick man awakened and recovered, 
he made his words good indeed, and prayed 
frequently, and fasted severely, and labored 
humbly, and conversed charitably, and morti- 
fied himself severely, and refused such secular 
solaces which other good men received to re- 
fresh and sustain their infirmities ; and gave no 
other account to them that asked him but this : 
" If I could not, in my ecstasy or dream, en- 
dure my mother's upbraiding my follies and 
weak religion, how shall I be able to suffer, 
that God should redargue me at doomsday, 
and the angels reproach my lukewarmness, and 
the devils aggravate my sins, and all the saints 
of God deride my follies and hypocrisies ? " 

The effect of that man's consideration may 
serve to actuate a meditation in every one of 
us : for we shall all be at that pass, that unless 
our shame and sorrows be cleansed by a timely 
repentance, and covered by the robe of Christ, 
we shall suffer the anger of God, the scorn of 
saints and angels, and our own shame in the 
general assembly of all mankind. This argu- 
ment is most considerable to them who are 



48 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

tender of their precious name, and sensible of 
honor ; if they rather would choose death than 
a disgrace, poverty rather than shame, let them 
remember that a sinful life will bring them to 
an intolerable shame at that day, when all that 
is excellent in heaven and earth shall be sum- 
moned as witnesses and parties in a fearful 
scrutiny. 

The sum is this : all that are born of Adam 
shall appear before God and his Christ ; and 
all the innumerable companies of angels and 
devils shall be there : and the wicked shall be 
affrighted with everything they see ; and there 
they shall see those good men, that taught them 
the ways of life, and all those evil persons, 
whom themselves have tempted into the ways 
of death, and those who were converted upon 
easier terms ; and some of these shall shame 
the wicked, and some shall curse them, and 
some shall upbraid them, and all shall amaze 
them. 

The majesty of the Judge, and the terrors 
of the judgment, shall be spoken aloud by the 
immediate forerunning accidents, which shall 
be so great violences to the old constitutions 
of nature, that it shall break her very bones, 
and disorder her till she be destroyed. Saint 
Jerome relates out of the Jews' books, that 
their Doctors use to account fifteen days of 
prodigy immediately before Christ's coming, 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 49 

and to every day assign a wonder, any one 
of which, if we should chance to see in the 
days of our flesh, it would affright us into the 
like thoughts which the old world had when 
they saw the countries round about them cov- 
ered with water and the divine vengeance ; or 
as those poor people near Adria, and the Medi- 
terranean Sea, when their houses and cities 
are entering into graves, and the bowels of 
the earth rent with convulsions and horrid 
tremblings. The sea, they say, shall rise fif- 
teen cubits above the highest mountains, and 
thence descend into hollowness, and a pro- 
digious drought; and when they are reduced 
again to their usual proportions, then all the 
beasts and creeping things, the monsters and 
the usual inhabitants of the sea, shall be gath- 
ered together, and make fearful noises to dis- 
tract mankind. The birds shall mourn and 
change their songs into threnes and sad ac- 
cents. Rivers of fire shall rise from east to 
west, and the stars shall be rent into threads 
of light, and scatter like the beards of comets. 
Then shall be fearful earthquakes, and the 
rocks shall rend in pieces, the trees shall dis- 
til blood, and the mountains and fairest struc- 
tures shall return into their primitive dust. 
The wild beasts shall leave their dens, and 
come into the companies of men, so that you 
shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of 



50 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

men, or congregations of beasts. Then shall 
the graves open and give up their dead ; and 
those which are alive in nature and dead in 
fear, shall be forced from the rocks whither 
they went to hide them, and from caverns of 
the earth, where they would fain have been 
concealed ; because their retirements are dis- 
mantled, and their rocks are broken into widei 
ruptures, and admit a strange light into theii 
secret bowels ; and the men being forced 
abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, 
shall run up and down distracted and at their 
wits' end ; and then some shall die, and some 
shall be changed. 

We may guess at the severity of the Judge 
by the lesser strokes of that judgment, which 
he is pleased to send upon sinners in this 
world, to make them afraid of the horrible 
pains of doomsday : I mean the torments of 
an unquiet conscience, the amazement and 
confusions of some sins and some persons. 
For I have sometimes seen persons surprised 
in a base action, and taken in the circum- 
stances of a crafty theft, and secret injustices, 
before their excuse was ready ; they have 
changed their color, their speech hath fal- 
tered, their tongue stammered, their eyes did 
wander and fix nowhere, till shame made 
them sink into their hollow eyepits, to retreat 
from the images and circumstances of discov- 



THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 51 

ery ; their wits are lost, their reason useless, 
the whole order of the soul is discomposed, 
and they neither see, nor feel, nor think, as 
they used to do, but they are broken into 
disorder by a stroke of damnation and a lesser 
stripe of hell. But then if you come to observe 
a guilty and a base murderer, a condemned 
traitor, and see him harassed first by an evil 
conscience, and then pulled in pieces by the 
hangman's hooks, or broken upon sorrows and 
the wheel, we may then guess (as well as we 
can in this life) what the pains of that day 
shall be to accursed souls. But those we 
shall consider afterwards in their proper scene ; 
now only we are to estimate the severity of 
our Judge by the intolerableness of an evil 
conscience. If guilt will make a man despair, 
and despair will make a man mad, confounded 
and dissolved in all the regions of his senses 
and more noble faculties, that he shall neither 
feel, nor hear, nor see anything but spectres 
and illusions, devils and frightful dreams, and 
hear noises, and shriek fearfully, and look pale 
and distracted, like a hopeless man from the 
horrors and confusions of a lost battle upon 
which all his hopes did stand, then the wicked 
must at the day of judgment expect strange 
things and fearful, and such now which no 
language can express, and then no patience 
can endure. 



52 THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 

The Lord shall judge concerning those judg- 
ments which men here make of things below ; 
and the fighting men shall perceive the noise 
of drunkards and fools, that cried him up for 
daring to kill his brother, to have been evil 
principles ; and then it will be declared by 
strange effects, that wealth is not the greatest 
fortune ; and ambition was but an ill counsel- 
lor ; and to lie for a good cause was no piety ; 
and to do evil for the glory of God was but an 
ill worshipping him ; and that good-nature was 
not well employed, when it spent itself in vi- 
cious company and evil compliances ; and that 
piety was not softness and want of courage ; 
and that poverty ought not to have been con- 
temptible ; and the cause that is unsuccessful is 
not therefore evil ; and what is folly here shall 
be wisdom there. Then shall men curse their 
evil guides, and their accursed superinduced 
necessities, and the evil guises of the world ; 
and then when silence shall be found inno- 
cence, and eloquence in many instances con- 
demned as criminal ; when the poor shall reign, 
and generals and tyrants shall lie low in hor- 
rible regions ; when he that lost all shall find 
a treasure, and he that spoiled him shall be 
found naked and spoiled by the destroyer ; 
then we shall find it true that we ought here 
to have done what our Judge, our blessed 
Lord, shall do there ; that is, take our meas- 



THE DAT OF JUDGMENT, 53 

ures of good and evil by the severities of the 
word of God, by the sermons of Christ, and 
the four Gospels, and by the Epistles of St. 
Paul, by justice and charity, by the laws of 
God and the laws of wise princes and repub- 
lics, by the rules of nature and the just pro- 
portions of reason, by the examples of good 
men and the proverbs of wise men, by sever- 
ity and the rules of discipline ; for then it 
shall be, that truth shall ride in triumph, and 
the holiness of Christ's sermons shall be mani- 
fest to all the world ; that the word of God 
shall be advanced over all the discourse of 
men, and " wisdom shall be justified by all 
her children." 

The devil shall accuse " the brethren," that 
is, the saints and servants of God, and shall tell 
concerning their follies and infirmities, the sins 
of their youth and the weakness of their age, 
the imperfect grace and the long schedule 
of omissions of duty, their scruples and their 
fears, their diffidences and pusillanimity, and 
all those things which themselves by strict ex- 
amination find themselves guilty of and have 
confessed, all their shame and the matter of 
their sorrows, their evil intentions and their 
little plots, their carnal confidences and too 
fond adherences to the things of this world, 
their indulgence and easiness of government, 
their wilder joys and freer meals, their loss of 



54 THE DAT OF JUDGMENT. 

time and their too forward and apt compliances, 
their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses, 
the mixtures of the world with the things of 
the spirit, and all the incidences of humanity- 
he will bring forth, and aggravate them by the 
circumstance of ingratitude, and the breach of 
promise, and the evacuating of their holy pur- 
poses, and breaking their resolutions, and rifling 
their vows. And all these things being drawn 
into an entire representment, and the bills clog- 
ged by numbers, will make the best men in the 
world seem foul and unhandsome, and stained 
with the characters of death and evil dishonor. 
But for these there is appointed a defender ; 
the Holy Spirit, that maketh intercession for 
us, shall then also interpose, and against all 
these things shall oppose the passion of our 
blessed Lord, and upon all their defects shall 
cast " the robe of his righteousness " ; and the 
sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as 
the repentance of their age ; and their omissions 
be excused by probable intervening causes ; 
and their little escapes shall appear single and 
in disunion, because they were always kept 
asunder by penitential prayers and sighings, 
and their seldom returns of sin by their daily 
watchfulness, and their often infirmities by the 
sincerity of their souls, and their scruples by 
their zeal, and their passions by their love, and 
all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice 



PRATER. 55 

which their Judge offered, and the Holy Spirit 
made effective by daily graces and assistances. 



PRAYER. 

IT KNOW not which is the greater wonder, 
-*- either that prayer, which is a duty so easy 
and facile, so ready and adapted to the powers 
and skill and opportunities of every man, should 
have so great effects, and be productive of such 
mighty blessings ; or, that we should be so un- 
willing to use so easy an instrument of procur- 
ing so much good. The first declares God's 
goodness, but this publishes man's folly and 
weakness, who finds in himself so much diffi- 
culty to perform a condition so easy and full 
of advantage. But the order of this felicity is 
knotted like the foldings of a serpent ; all those 
parts of easiness which invite us to do the duty 
are become like the joints of a bulrush, not 
bendings, but consolidations and stiffenings ; 
the very facility becomes its objection, and in 
every of its stages we make or find a huge 
uneasiness. At first we do not know what to 
ask ; and when we do, then we find difficulty 
to bring our will to desire it ; and when that is 
instructed and kept in awe, it mingles interest, 
and confounds the purposes ; and when it is 



56 PRAYER. 

forced to ask honestly and severely, then it 
wills so coldly, that God hates the prayer ; and 
if it desires fervently, it sometimes turns that 
into passion, and that passion breaks into mur- 
murs or unquietness ; or if that be avoided, the 
indifferency cools into death, or the fire burns 
violently and is quickly spent ; our desires are 
dull as a rock, or fugitive as lightning : either 
we ask ill things earnestly, or good things re- 
missly ; we either court our own danger, or are 
not zealous for our real safety ; or if we be 
right in our matter, or earnest in our affections, 
and lasting in our abode, yet we miss in the 
manner ; and either we ask for evil ends, or 
without religious and awful apprehensions ; or 
we rest in the words and signification of the 
prayer, and never take care to pass on to ac- 
tion ; or else we sacrifice in the company of 
Corah, being partners of a schism, or a rebel- 
lion in religion ; or we bring unhallowed cen- 
sers, our hearts send up to God an unholy 
smoke, a cloud from the fires of lust, and either 
the flames of lust or rage, of wine or revenge, 
kindle the beast that is laid upon the altar ; or 
we bring swine's flesh, or a dog's neck ; where- 
as God never accepts, or delights in a prayer, 
unless it be for a holy thing, to a lawful end, 
presented unto him upon the wings of zeal and 
love, of religious sorrow, or religious joy, by 
sanctified lips, and pure hands, and a sincere 



PRATER. 57 

heart. It must be the prayer of a gracious 
man ; and he is only gracious before God, and 
acceptable, and effective in his prayer, whose 
life is holy, and whose prayer is holy ; for both 
these are necessary ingredients to the constitu- 
tion of a prevailing prayer ; there is a holiness 
peculiar to the man, and a holiness peculiar to 
the prayer, that must adorn the prayer before 
it can be united to the intercession of the holy 
Jesus, in which union alone our prayers can be 
prevailing. 

Lust and uncleanness are a direct enemy to 
the praying man, an obstruction to his prayers ; 
for this is not only a profanation, but a direct 
sacrilege ; it defiles a temple to the ground ; it 
takes from a man all affection to spiritual 
things, and mingles his very soul with the 
things of the world ; it makes his understand- 
ing low, and his reasonings cheap and foolish, 
and it destroys his confidence, and all his man- 
ly hopes ; it makes his spirit light, effeminate, 
and fantastic, and dissolves his attention ; and 
makes his mind so to disaffect all the objects of 
his desires, that when he prays he is as uneasy 
as an impaled person, or a condemned criminal 
upon the hook or wheel ; and it hath in it this 
evil quality, that a lustful person cannot pray 
heartily against his sin ; he cannot desire his 
cure, for his will is contradictory to his collect, 
and he would not that God should hear the 



58 PRATER, 

words of his prayer, which he, poor man, never 
intended. For no crime so seizes upon the will 
as that ; some sins steal an affection, or obey a 
temptation, or secure an interest, or work by 
the way of understanding, but lust seizes di- 
rectly upon the will, for the devil knows well 
that the lusts of the body are soon cured ; the 
uneasiness that dwells there is a disease very- 
tolerable, and every degree of patience can pass 
under it. But therefore the devil seizes upon 
the will, and that is it that makes adulteries and 
all the species of uncleanness ; and lust grows 
so hard a cure, because the formality of it is, 
that it will not be cured ; the will loves it, and, 
so long as it does, God cannot love the man ; 
for God is the prince of purities, and the Son 
of God is the king of virgins, and the Holy 
Spirit is all love, and that is all purity, and all 
spirituality : and therefore the prayer of an 
adulterer, or an unclean person, is like the sac- 
rifices to Moloch, or the rites of Flora, " ubi 
Cato spectator esse non potuit" A good man 
will not endure them ; much less will God 
entertain such reekings of the Dead Sea and 
clouds of Sodom. For so an impure vapor, 
begotten of the slime of the earth by the fevers 
and adulterous heats of an intemperate summer- 
sun, striving by the ladder of a mountain to 
climb up to heaven, and rolling into various 
figures by an uneasy, unfixed revolution, and 



PRAYER. 59 

stopped at the middle region of the air, being 
thrown from his pride and attempt of passing 
towards the seat of the stars, turns into an un- 
wholesome flame, and, like the breath of hell, is 
confined into a prison of darkness, and a cloud, 
till it breaks into diseases, plagues, and mil- 
dews, stink and blastings : so is the prayer of 
an unchaste person ; it strives to climb the bat- 
tlements of heaven, but because it is a flame of 
sulphur, salt, and bitumen, and was kindled in 
the dishonorable regions below, derived from 
hell, and contrary to God, it cannot pass forth 
to the element of love, but ends in barrenness 
and murmur, fantastic expectations, and trifling 
imaginative confidences ; and- they at last end 
in sorrows and despair. Every state of sin is 
against the possibility of a man's being ac- 
cepted ; but these have a proper venom against 
the graciousness of the person, and the power 
of the prayer. God can never accept an un- \ 
holy prayer, and a wicked man can never send 
forth any other ; the waters pass through im- 
pure aqueducts and channels of brimstone, and 
therefore may end in brimstone and fire, but 
never in forgiveness and the blessings of an 
eternal charity. 

Henceforth, therefore, never any more won- 
der that men pray so seldom ; there are few 
that feel the relish, and are enticed with the 
deliciousness, and refreshed with the comforts, 



60 PRATER. 

and instructed with the sanctity, and acquainted 
with the secrets of a holy prayer : but cease 
also to wonder, that of those few that say many 
prayers, so few find any return of any at all. 
To make up a good and a lawful prayer, there 
must be charity, with all its daughters, alms, 
forgiveness, not judging uncharitably ; there 
must be purity of spirit, that is, purity of inten- 
tion ; and there must be purity of the body and 
soul, that is, the cleanness of chastity ; and 
there must be no vice remaining, no affection 
to sin : for he that brings his body to God, and 
hath left his will in the power of any sin, offers 
to God the calves of his lips, but not a whole 
burnt-offering ; a lame oblation, but not a u rea- 
sonable sacrifice "; and therefore their portion 
shall be amongst them whose prayers were 
never recorded in the book of life, whose tears 
God never put into his bottle, whose desires 
shall remain ineffectual to eternal ages. 

Plutarch reports, that the Tyrians tied their 
gods with chains, because certain persons did 
dream that Apollo said he would leave their 
city and go to the party of Alexander, who 
then besieged the town : and Apollodorus tells 
of some, that tied the image of Saturn with 
bands of wool upon his feet. So some Chris- 
tians ; they think God is tied to their sect, and 
bound to be of their side, and the interest of 
their opinion ; and they think, he can never go 



PRAYER. 61 

to the enemy's party, so long as they charm 
him with certain forms of words or disguises of 
their own ; and then all the success they have, 
and all the evils that are prosperous, all the 
mischiefs they do, and all the ambitious designs 
that do succeed, they reckon upon the account 
of their prayers ; and well they may : for their 
prayers are sins, and their desires are evil ; 
they wish mischief, and they act iniquity, and 
they enjoy their sin : and if this be a blessing 
or a cursing, themselves shall then judge, and 
all the world shall perceive, when the accounts 
of all the world are truly stated ; then, when 
prosperity shall be called to accounts, and ad- 
versity shall receive its comforts, when virtue 
shall have a crown, and the satisfaction of all 
sinful desires shall be recompensed with an in- 
tolerable sorrow, and the despair of a perishing 
soul. Nero's mother prayed passionately, that 
her son might be emperor ; and many persons, 
of whom St. James speaks, "pray to spend upon 
their lusts," and they are heard too : some 
were not, and very many are : and some, that 
fight against a just possessor of a country, pray, 
that their wars may be prosperous ; and some- 
times they have been heard too: and Julian 
the Apostate prayed, and sacrificed, and in- 
quired of demons, and burned man's flesh, and 
operated with secret rites, and all that he 
might craftily and powerfully oppose the relig- 



62 PRAYER. 

ion of Christ ; and he was heard too, and did 
mischief beyond the malice and the effect of 
his predecessors, that did swim in Christian 
blood. But when we sum up the accounts at 
the foot of their lives, or so soon as the thing 
was understood, we find that the effect of Ag- 
grippina's prayer was, that her son murdered 
her ; and of those lustful petitioners, in St. 
James, that they were given over to the tyr- 
anny and possession of their passions and 
baser appetites ; and the effect of Julian the 
Apostate's prayer was, that he lived and died 
a professed enemy of Christ ; and the effect of 
the prayers of usurpers is, that they do mis- 
chief, and reap curses, and undo mankind, and 
provoke God, and live hated, and die miser- 
able, and shall possess the fruit of their sin to 
eternal ages. 

The first thing that hinders the prayer of a 
good man from obtaining its effects is a violent 
anger, and a violent storm in the spirit of him 
that prays. For anger sets the house on fire, 
and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and 
intend propulsion, defence, displeasure, or re- 
venge ; it is a short madness, and an eternal 
enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and 
fair conversation ; it intends its own object with 
all the earnestness of perception, or activity 
of design, and a quicker motion of a too warm 
and distempered blood ; it is a fever in the 



PRAYER. 63 

heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire 
in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a 
fury all over ; and therefore can never suffer a 
man to be in a disposition to pray. For prayer 
is an action, and a state of intercourse and 
desire, exactly contrary to this character of 
anger. Prayer is an action of likeness to the 
Holy Ghost, the spirit of gentleness and dove- 
like simplicity ; an imitation of the holy Jesus, 
whose spirit is meek, up to the greatness of 
the biggest example ; and a conformity to God, 
whose anger is always just, and marches 
slowly, and is without transportation, and often 
hindered, and never hasty, and is full of mercy: 
prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness 
of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, 
the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, 
and the calm of our tempest ; prayer is the 
issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts ; 
it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of 
meekness ; and he that prays to God with an 
angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed 
spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to 
meditate, and sets up his closet in the out- 
quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier- 
garrison to be wise in. Anger is a perfect 
alienation of the mind from prayer, and there- 
fore is contrary to that attention which pre- 
sents our prayers in a right line to God. For 
so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of 



64 PRATER. 

grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, 
and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above 
the clouds ; but the poor bird was beaten back 
with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and 
his motion made irregular and inconstant, de- 
scending more at every breath of the tempest 
than it could recover by the libration and fre- 
quent weighing of his wings; till the little 
creature was forced to sit down and pant, and 
stay till the storm was over ; and then it made 
a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as 
if it had learned music and motion from an 
angel, as he passed sometimes through the air 
about his ministries here below. So is the 
prayer of a good man ; when his affairs have 
required business, and his business was matter 
of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon 
a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his 
duty met with the infirmities of a man, and 
anger was its instrument, and the instrument 
became stronger than the prime agent, and 
raised a tempest, and overruled the man ; and 
then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts 
were troubled, and his words went up towards 
a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back 
again and made them without intention ; and 
the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must 
be content to lose the prayer, and he must 
recover it when his anger is removed, and his 
spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of 



PRATER. 65 

Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God ; and 
then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of 
the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it 
returns, like the useful bee, laden with a bless- 
ing and the dew of heaven. 

But, then, for spiritual things, for the inter- 
est of our souls, and the affairs of the king- 
dom, we pray to God with just such a zeal as 
a man begs of a surgeon to cut him of the 
stone, or a condemned man desires his execu- 
tioner quickly to put him out of his pain, by 
taking away his life ; when things are come to 
that pass, it must be done, but God knows with 
what little complacency and desire the man 
makes his request. And yet the things of re- 
ligion and the spirit are the only things that 
ought to be desired vehemently, and pursued 
passionately, because God hath set such a value 
upon them, that they are the effects of his 
greatest loving-kindness ; they are the pur- 
chases of Christ's blood, and the effect of his 
continual intercession ; the fruits of his bloody 
sacrifice, and the gifts of his healing and saving 
mercy; the graces of God's spirit, and the only 
instruments of felicity ; and if we can have 
fondness for things indifferent or dangerous, 
our prayers upbraid our spirits when we beg 
coldly and tamely for those things for which 
we ought to die, which are more precious than 
the globes of kings, and weightier than imperial 



66 PRAYER. 

sceptres, richer than the spoils of the sea, or 
the treasures of the Indian hills. 

He that is cold and tame in his prayers, hath 
not tasted of the deliciousness of religion and 
the goodness of God ; he is a stranger to the 
secrets of the kingdom, and therefore he does 
not know what it is either to have hunger or 
satiety ; and therefore neither are they hungry 
for God nor satisfied with the world, but re- 
main stupid and inapprehensive, without resolu- 
tion and determination, never choosing clearly, 
nor pursuing earnestly ; and therefore never 
enter into possession, but always stand at the 
gate of weariness, unnecessary caution, and 
perpetual irresolution. But so it is too often 
in our prayers ; we come to God because it is 
civil so to do and a general custom, but neither 
drawn thither by love, nor pinched by spirit- 
ual necessities, and pungent apprehensions : 
we say so many prayers, because we are re- 
solved so to do, and we pass through them, 
sometimes with a little attention, sometimes 
with none at all ; and can we think that the 
grace of chastity can be obtained at such a 
purchase, that grace that hath cost more la- 
bors than all the persecutions of faith, and all 
the disputes of hope, and all the expense of 
charity besides, amounts to ? Can we expect 
that our sins should be washed by a lazy prayer? 

Though your person be as gracious as David 



PRAYER. 67 

or Job, and your desire as holy as the love of 
angels, and your necessities great as a new 
penitent, yet it pierces not the clouds, unless 
it be also as loud as thunder, passionate as the 
cries of women, and clamorous as necessity. 
For every prayer we make is considered by 
God, and recorded in heaven ; but cold prayers 
are not put into the account in order to effect 
an acceptation, but are laid aside like the buds 
of roses which a cold wind hath nipped into 
death, and the discolored tawny face of an 
Indian slave : and when, in order to your hopes 
of obtaining a great blessing, you reckon up 
your prayers with which you have solicited 
your suit in the court of heaven, you must 
reckon, not by the number of the collects, but 
by your sighs and passions, by the vehemence 
of your desires and the fervor of your spirit, 
the apprehension of your need and the con- 
sequent prosecution of your supply. Christ 
prayed " with loud cryings," and St. Paul 
made mention of his scholars in his prayers 
"night and day." Fall upon your knees and 
grow there, and let not your desires cool nor 
your zeal remit, but renew it again and again ; 
and let not your offices and the custom of pray- 
ing put thee in mind of thy need, but let thy 
need draw thee to thy holy offices ; and remem- 
ber how great a God, how glorious a Majesty 
you speak to ; therefore let not your devotions 



68 PRATER. 

and addresses be little. Remember how great 
a need thou hast ; let not your desires be less. 
Remember how great the thing is you pray 
for ; do not undervalue it with any indifferency. 
Remember that prayer is an act of religion ; 
let it, therefore, be made thy business : and, 
lastly, remember that God hates a cold prayer, 
and, therefore, will never bless it, but it shall 
be always ineffectual. 

No prayers can prevail upon an indisposed 
person. For the sun himself cannot enlighten 
a blind eye, nor the soul move a body whose 
silver cord is loosed, and whose joints are un- 
tied by the rudeness and dissolutions of a per- 
tinacious sickness. But then, suppose an eye 
quick and healthful, or apt to be refreshed with 
light and a friendly prospect ; yet a glow-worm 
or a diamond, the shells of pearl, or a dead 
man's candle, are not enough to make him dis- 
cern the beauties of the world, and to admire 
the glories of creation. 

A man of an ordinary piety is like Gideon's 
fleece, wet in its own locks, but it could not 
water a poor man's garden. But so does a 
thirsty land drink all the dew of heaven that 
wets its face, and a greater shower makes no 
torrent, nor digs so much as a little furrow, 
that the drills of the water might pass into 
rivers, or refresh their neighbor's weariness ; 
but when the earth is full, and hath no strange 



; 



PRAYER. 69 

consumptive needs, then at the next time when 
God blesses it with a gracious shower, it divides 
into portions, and sends it abroad hi free and 
equal communications, that all that stand round 
about may feel the shower. So is a good 
man's prayer ; his own cup is full, it is crowned 
with health, and overflows with blessings, and 
all that drink of his cup and eat at his table 
are refreshed with his joys, and divide with him 
in his holy portions. 

The world itself is established and kept from 
dissolution by the prayers of saints ; and the 
prayers of saints shall hasten the day of judg- 
ment; and we cannot easily find two effects 
greater. But there are many other very great 
ones ; for the prayers of holy men appease 
God's wrath, drive away temptations, and resist 
and overcome the devil : holy prayer procures 
the ministry and service of angels, it rescinds 
the decrees of God, it cures sicknesses and 
obtains pardon, it arrests the sun in its course, 
and stays the wheels of the chariot of the 
moon; it rules over all God's creatures, and 
opens and shuts the storehouses of rain ; it 
unlocks the cabinet of the womb, and quenches 
the violence of fire ; it stops the mouths of 
lions, and reconciles our sufferance and weak 
faculties with the violence of torment and 
sharpness of persecution ; it pleases God and 
supplies all our needs. 



70 PARDON OF SIN 

Prayer can obtain everything; it can open 
the windows of heaven, and shut the gates of 
hell ; it can put a holy constraint upon God, 
and detain an angel till he leave a blessing ; it 
can open the treasures of rain, and soften the 
iron ribs of rocks, till they melt into tears and 
a flowing river ; prayer can unclasp the girdles 
of the north, saying to a mountain of ice, Be 
thou removed hence, and cast into the bottom 
of the sea ; it can arrest the sun in the midst 
of his course, and send the swift-winged winds 
upon our errand ; and all those strange things, 
and secret decrees, and unrevealed transactions, 
which are above the clouds and far beyond the 
regions of the stars, shall combine in ministry 
and advantages for the praying man. 



PARDON OF SIN. 

TF we consider upon how trifling and incon- 
■*• siderable grounds most men hope for pardon, 
(if at least that may be called hope, which is 
nothing but a careless boldness, and an unrea- 
sonable wilful confidence,) we shall see much 
cause to pity very many who are going merrily 
to a sad and intolerable death. Pardon of sins 
is a mercy which Christ purchased with his 
dearest blood, which he ministers to us upon 



PARDON OF SIN. 71 

conditions of an infinite kindness, but yet of 
great holiness and obedience, and an active 
living faith. It is a grace, that the most holy 
persons beg of God with mighty passion, and 
labor for with a great diligence, and expect 
with trembling fears, and concerning it many 
times suffer sadnesses with uncertain souls, and 
receive it by degrees, and it enters upon them 
by little portions, and it is broken as their sighs 
and sleeps. But so have I seen the returning 
sea enter upon the strand ; and the waters roll- 
ing towards the shore, throw up little portions 
of the tide, and retire as if nature meant to 
play, and not to change the abode of waters ; 
but still the flood crept by little steppings, and 
invaded more by his progressions than he lost 
by his retreat ; and having told the number of 
its steps, it possesses its new portion till the 
angel calls it back, that it may leave its un- 
faithful dwelling of the sand. So is the pardon 
of our sin ; it comes by slow motions, and first 
quits a present death, and turns, it may be, 
into a sharp sickness ; and if that sickness prove 
not health to the soul, it washes off, and it may 
be will dash against the rock again, and pro- 
ceed to take off the several instances of anger 
and the periods of wrath ; but all this while 
it is uncertain concerning our final interest, 
whether it be ebb or flood ; and every hearty 
prayer and every bountiful alms still enlarges 



72 GODLY FEAR. 

the pardon, or adds a degree of probability and 
hope ; and then a drunken meeting, or a covet- 
ous desire, or an act of lust, or looser swear- 
ing, idle talk, or neglect of religion, makes the 
pardon retire ; and while it is disputed between 
Christ and Christ's enemy, who shall be Lord, 
the pardon fluctuates like the wave, striving to 
climb the rock, and is washed off like its own 
retinue, and it gets possession by time and un- 
certainty, by difficulty and the degrees of a 
hard progression. 



GODLY FEAR. 

FEAR is the great bridle of intemperance, 
the modesty of the spirit, and the restraint 
of gayeties and dissolutions ; it is the girdle to 
the soul, and the handmaid to repentance, the 
arrest of sin, and the cure or antidote to the 
spirit of reprobation ; it preserves our apprehen- 
sions of the divine majesty, and hinders our 
single actions from combining to sinful habits ; 
it is the mother of consideration, and the nurse 
of sober counsels ; and it puts the soul to fer- 
mentation and activity, making it to pass from 
trembling to caution, from caution to careful- 
ness, from carefulness to watchfulness, from 
thence to prudence ; and by the gates and prog- 
resses of repentance, it leads the soul on to 



GODLY FEAR. 73 

love, and to felicity, and to joys in God that 
shall never cease again. Fear is the guard of 
a man in the days of prosperity, and it stands 
upon the watch-towers, and spies the approach- 
ing danger, and gives warning to them that 
laugh loud, and feast in the chambers of re- 
joicing, where a man cannot consider by reason 
of the noises of wine and jest and music : and 
if prudence takes it by the hand, and leads it 
on to duty, it is a state of grace, and a uni- 
versal instrument to infant religion, and the 
only security of the less perfect persons ; and 
in all senses is that homage we owe to God, 
who sends often to demand it, even then when 
he speaks in thunder, or smites by a plague, or 
awakens us by threatenings, or discomposes our 
easiness by sad thoughts, and tender eyes, and 
fearful hearts, and trembling considerations. 

But this so excellent grace is soon abused in 
the best and most tender spirits ; in those who 
are softened by nature and by religion, by in- 
felicities or cares, by sudden accidents or a sad 
soul ; and the devil, observing that fear, like spare 
diet, starves the fevers of lust and quenches 
the flames of hell, endeavors to heighten this 
abstinence so much as to starve the man, and 
break the spirit into timorousness and scruple, 
sadness and unreasonable tremblings, credulity 
and trifling observation, suspicion and false 
accusations of God ; and then vice being turned 



74 GODLY FEAR. 

out at the gate, returns in at the postern, and 
does the work of hell and death by running 
too inconsiderately in the paths which seem to 
lead to heaven. But so have I seen a harm- 
less dove, made dark with an artificial night, 
and her eyes sealed and locked up with a little 
quill, soaring upward and flying with amaze- 
ment, fear, and an undiscerning wing ; she 
made towards heaven, but knew not that she 
was made a train and an instrument to teach 
her enemy to prevail upon her and all her de- 
fenceless kindred. So is a superstitious man, 
zealous and blind, forward and mistaken ; he 
runs towards heaven, as he thinks, but he 
chooses foolish paths, and out of fear takes any- 
thing that he is told; or fancies and guesses 
concerning God by measures taken from his 
own diseases and imperfections. But fear, 
when it is inordinate, is never a good counsel- 
lor, nor makes a good friend ; and he that fears 
God as his enemy, is the most completely mis- 
erable person in the world. For if he with 
reason believes God to be his enemy, then the 
man needs no other argument to prove that he 
is undone than this, that the fountain of bless- 
ing (in tli is state in which the man is) will 
never issue anything upon him but cursings. 
But if he fears this without reason, he makes 
bis fears true by the very suspicion of God, 
doing liini dishonor, and then doing those fond 



GODLY FEAR. 75 

and trifling acts of jealousy which will make 
God to be what the man feared he already was. 
We do not know God, if we can think any hard 
thing concerning him. If God be merciful, let 
us only fear to offend him ; but then let us 
never be fearful that he will destroy us, when 
we are careful not to displease him. There are 
some persons so miserable and scrupulous, such 
perpetual tormentors of themselves with unne- 
cessary fears, that their meat and drink is a 
snare to their consciences ; if they eat, they 
fear they are gluttons ; if they fast, they fear 
they are hypocrites ; and if they would watch, 
they complain of sleep as of a deadly sin ; and 
every temptation, though resisted, makes them 
cry for pardon ; and every return of such an 
accident makes them think God is angry ; and 
every anger of God will break them in pieces. 
These persons do not believe noble things 
concerning God ; they do not think that he is 
as ready to pardon them as they are to pardon 
a sinning servant ; they do not believe how 
much God delights in mercy, nor how wise he 
is to consider and to make abatement for our 
unavoidable infirmities ; they make judgment 
of themselves by the measures of an angel, 
^nd take the account of God by the propor- 
tions of a tyrant. The best that can be said 
concerning such persons is, that they are huge- 
ij tempted, or hugely ignorant. For although 



76 GODLY FEAR. 

ignorance is by some persons named the mother 
of devotion, yet, if it falls in a hard ground, it 
is the mother of atheism ; if in a soft ground, 
it is the parent of superstition ; but if it pro- 
ceeds from evil or mean opinions of God, (as 
such scruples and unreasonable fears do many 
times,) it is an evil of a great impiety, and, in 
some sense, if it were in equal degrees, is as 
bad as atheism ; for so he that says there was 
no such man as Julius Caesar does him less dis- 
pleasure than he that says there was, but that 
he was a tyrant and a bloody parricide. And 
the Cimmerians were not esteemed impious for 
saying that there was no sun in the heavens ; 
but Anaxagoras was esteemed irreligious for 
saying the sun was a very stone : and though 
to deny there is a God is a high impiety and 
intolerable, yet he says worse who, believing 
there is a God, says he delights in human sacri- 
fices, in miseries and death, in tormenting his 
servants, and punishing their very infelicities 
and unavoidable mischances. To be God, and 
to be essentially and infinitely good, is the 
same thing ; and therefore to deny either is 
to be reckoned among the greatest crimes in 
the world. 

Let the grounds of our actions be noble, 
beginning upon reason, proceeding with pru- 
dence, measured by the common lines of men, 
and confident upon the expectation of a usuaj 



GODLY FEAR. 77 

providence. Let us proceed from causes to 
effects, from natural means to ordinary events, 
and believe felicity not to be a chance but a 
choice ; and evil to be the daughter of sin and 
the divine anger, not of fortune and fancy. Let 
us fear God when we have made him angry, 
and not be afraid of him when we heartily and 
laboriously do our duty. Our fears are to be 
measured by open revelation and certain expe- 
rience, by the threatenings of God and the say- 
ings of wise men, and their limit is reverence, 
and godliness is their end ; and then fear shall 
be a duty, and a rare instrument of many. In 
all other cases it is superstition or folly, it is 
sin or punishment, the ivy of religion, and the 
misery of an honest and a weak heart ; and is 
to be cured only by reason and good company, 
a wise guide and a plain rule, a cheerful spirit 
and a contented mind, by joy in God according 
to the commandments, that is, " a rejoicing 
evermore." 

The illusions of a weak piety, or an unskilful 
confident soul, fancy to see mountains of diffi- 
culty; but touch them, and they seem like 
clouds riding upon the wings of the wind, and 
put on shapes as we please to dream. He that 
denies to give alms for fear of being poor, or to 
entertain a disciple for fear of being suspected 
of the party, or to own a duty for fear of being 
put to venture for a crown ; he that takes part 



78 HUMAN WEAKNESS. 

of the intemperance because he dares not dis- 
please the company, or in any sense fears the 
fears of the world and not the fear of God, — 
this man enters into his portion of fear betimes, 
but it will not be finished to eternal ages. To 
fear the censures of men, when God is your 
judge ; to fear their evil, when God is your 
defence ; to fear death, when he is the entrance 
to life and felicity, is unreasonable and perni- 
cious. But if you will turn your passion into 
duty and joy and security, fear to offend God, 
to enter voluntarily into temptation ; fear the 
alluring face of lust, and the smooth entertain- 
ments of intemperance ; fear the anger of God, 
when you have deserved it; and, when you 
have recovered from the snare, then infinitely 
fear to return into that condition, in which 
whosoever dwells is the heir of fear and eter- 
nal sorrow. 



HUMAN WEAKNESS. 

rpiIERE is nothing that creeps upon the 
■*■ earth, nothing that ever God made, weaker 
than man. For God fitted horses and mules 
with strength, bees and pismires with sagacity, 
harts and hares with swiftness, birds with 
feathers and a light airy body ; and they all 
know their times, and are fitted for their 



FAITH. 79 

work, and regularly acquire the proper end 
of their creation. But man, that was de- 
signed to an immortal duration, and the frui- 
tion of God forever, knows not how to ob- 
tain it ; he is made upright to look up to 
heaven, but he knows no more how to pur- 
chase it than to climb it. Once, man went 
to make an ambitious tower to outreach the 
clouds, or the preternatural risings* of the 
water, but could not do it; he cannot prom- 
ise himself the daily bread of his necessity 
upon the stock of his own wit or industry; 
and for going to heaven, he was so far from 
doing that naturally, that as soon as ever he 
was made, he became the son of death, and he 
knew not how to get a pardon for eating of 
an apple against the divine commandment. 



FAITH. 

T7AITH is a certain image of eternity ; all 
•*- things are present to it ; things past and 
things to come are all so before the eyes of 
faith, that he in whose eye that candle is en- 
kindled beholds heaven as present, and sees 
how blessed a thing it is to die in God's favor, 
and to be chimed to our grave with the music 
of a good conscience. Faith converses with 



80 FAITH, 

the angels, and antedates the hymns of glory ; 
every man that hath this grace is as certain 
that there are glories for him, if he perseveres 
in duty, as if he had heard and sung the thanks- 
giving-song for the blessed sentence of dooms- 
day. And therefore it is no matter if these 
things are separate and distant objects ; none 
but children and fools are taken with the pres- 
ent trifle, and neglect a distant blessing of 
which they have credible and believed notices. 
Did the merchant see the pearls and the wealth 
he designed to get in the trade of twenty 
years ? And is it possible that a child should, 
when he learns the first rudiments of grammar, 
know what excellent things there are in learn- 
ing, whither he designs his labor and his hopes ? 
We labor for that which is uncertain and dis- 
tant and believed, and hoped for with many 
allays, and seen with diminution, and a troubled 
ray ; and what excuse can there be that we do 
not labor for that which is told us by God, and 
preached by his only Son, and confirmed by 
miracles, and which Christ himself died to pur- 
chase, and millions of martyrs died to witness, 
and which we see good men and wise believe 
with an assent stronger than their evidence, 
and which they do believe because they do 
love, and love because they do believe ? There 
is nothing to be said, but that faith which did 
enlighten the blind, and cleanse the lepers, and 



LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 81 

washed the soul of the Ethiopian ; that faith 
that cures the sick, and strengthens the para- 
lytic, and baptizes the catechumens, and justi- 
fies the faithful, and repairs the penitent, and 
confirms the just, and crowns the martyrs ; 
that faith, if it be true and proper, Christian 
and alive, active and effective in us, is suffi- 
cient to appease the storm of our passions, and 
to instruct all our ignorances, and to " make us 
wise unto salvation/' 



LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 

A S our duty must be whole, so it must be 
■^ fervent ; for a languishing body may have 
all its parts, and yet be useless to many pur- 
poses of nature : and you may reckon all the 
joints of a dead man, but the heart is cold, and 
the joints are stiff, and fit for nothing but for 
the little people that creep in graves. And so 
are very many men ; if you sum up the ac- 
counts of their religion, they can reckon days 
and months of religion, various offices, charity 
and prayers, reading and meditation, faith and 
knowledge, catechism and sacraments, duty to 
God and duty to princes, paying debts and pro- 
vision for children, confessions and tears, disci- 
pline in families, and love of good people ; and 



82 LVKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 

it may be, you shall not reprove their numbers, 
or find any lines unfilled in their tables of 
accounts. But when you have handled all 
this, and considered, you will find at last you 
have taken a dead man by the hand ; there is 
not a finger wanting, but they are stiff as 
icicles, and without flexure, as the legs of 
elephants. 

I have seen a fair structure begun with art 
and care, and raised to half its stature, and 
then it stood still by the misfortune or negli- 
gence of the owner ; and the rain descended, 
and dwelt in its joints, and supplanted the con- 
texture of its pillars ; and having stood a while 
like the antiquated temple of a deceased ora- 
cle, it fell into a hasty age, and sunk upon its 
own knees, and so descended into ruin. So is 
the imperfect, unfinished spirit of a man ; it 
lays the foundation of a holy resolution, and 
strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecu- 
tion; it raises up the walls, sacraments, and 
prayers, reading, and holy ordinances ; and 
holy actions begin with a slow motion, and the 
building stays, and the spirit is weary, and the 
soul is naked, and exposed to temptations, and 
in the days of storm takes in everything that 
can do it mischief ; and it is faint and sick, list- 
less and tired, and it stands till its own weight 
wearies the foundation, and then declines to 
death and sad disorder. 



LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 83 

However it be very easy to have our thoughts 
wander, yet it is our indifferency and lukewarm- 
ness that makes it so natural : and you may ob- 
serve it, that so long as the light shines bright, 
and the fires of devotion and desires flame out, 
so long the mind of a man stands close to the 
altar, and waits upon the sacrifice ; but as the 
fires die and desires decay, so the mind steals 
away, and walks abroad to see the little images 
of beauty and pleasure, which it beholds in the 
falling stars and little glow-worms of the world. 
The river that runs slow and creeps by the 
banks, and begs leave of every turf to let it 
pass, is drawn into little hollownesses, and 
spends itself in smaller portions, and dies with 
diversion ; but when it runs with vigorousness 
and a full stream, and breaks down every ob- 
stacle, making it even as its own brow, it stays 
not to be tempted by little avocations, and to 
creep into holes, but runs into the sea through 
full and useful channels. So is a man's prayer ; 
if it moves upon the feet of an abated appetite, 
it wanders into the society of every trifling 
accident, and stays at the corners of the fancy, 
and talks with every object it meets, and can- 
not arrive at heaven ; but when it is carried 
upon the wings of passion and strong desires, a 
swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes on 
through all the intermedial regions of clouds, 
and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the 



84 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 

throne, where mercy sits, and thence sends 
holy showers of refreshment. I deny not but 
some little drops will turn aside, and fall from 
the full channel by the weakness of the banks, 
and hollowness of the passage ; but the main 
course is still continued : and although the most 
earnest and devout persons feel and complain 
of some looseness of spirit, and unfixed atten- 
tions, yet their love and their desire secure the 
main portions, and make the prayer to be 
strong, fervent, and effectual. 

He that is warm to-day and cold to-morrow, 
zealous in his resolution and weary in his prac- 
tices, fierce in the beginning and slack and 
easy in his progress, hath not yet well chosen 
what side he will be of; he sees not reason 
enough for religion, and he hath not confidence 
enough for its contrary ; and therefore he is, as 
St. James calls him, " of a doubtful mind." 
For religion is worth as much to-day as it was 
yesterday, and that cannot change though we 
do; and if we do, we have left God; and 
whither he can go that goes from God, his own 
sorrows will soon enough instruct him. This 
fire must never go out, but it must be like the 
fire of heaven, it must shine like the stars ; 
though sometimes covered with a cloud, or ob- 
scured by a greater light, yet they dwell for- 
ever in their orbs, and walk in their circles, and 
observe their circumstances, but go not out by 



LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 85 

day nor night, and set not when kings die, nor 
are extinguished when nations change their 
government. So must the zeal of a Christian 
be a constant incentive of his duty ; and though 
sometimes his hand is drawn back by violence 
or need, and his prayers shortened by the im- 
portunity of business, and some parts omitted 
by necessities and just compliances, yet still the 
fire is kept alive, it burns within when the light 
breaks not forth, and is eternal as the orb of 
fire, or the embers of the altar of incense. 

In every action of religion God expects such 
a warmth, and a holy fire to go along, that it 
may be able to enkindle the wood upon the 
altar, and consume the sacrifice ; but God hates 
an indifferent spirit. Earnestness and vivacity, 
quickness and delight, perfect choice of the 
service and a delight in the prosecution, is all 
that the spirit of a man can yield towards his 
religion : the outward work is the effect of the 
body ; but if a man does it heartily and with all 
his mind, then religion hath wings and moves 
upon wheels of fire. 

The zeal of the Apostles was this : they 
preached publicly and privately, they prayed 
for all men, they wept to God for the hardness 
of men's hearts, they " became all things to all 
men, that they might gain some," they travel- 
led through deeps and deserts, they endured 
the heat of the Syrian star and the violence of 



86 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 

Euroclydon, winds and tempests, seas and pris- 
ons, mockings and scourgings, fastings and 
poverty, labor and watching ; they endured 
every man and wronged no man ; they would 
do any good thing and suffer any evil, if they 
had but hopes to prevail upon a soul ; they 
persuaded men meekly, they entreated them 
humbly, they convinced them powerfully ; they 
watched for their good, but meddled not with 
their interest: and this is the Christian zeal, 
the zeal of meekness, the zeal of charity, the 
zeal of patience. 

The Jews tell that Adam, having seen the 
beauties and tasted the delicacies of paradise, 
repented and mourned upon the Indian moun- 
tains for three hundred years together : and we, 
who have a great share in the cause of his sor- 
rows, can by nothing be invited to a persever- 
ing, a great, a passionate religion, more than 
by remembering what he lost, and what is laid 
up for them whose hearts are burning lamps, 
and are all on fire with divine love, whose 
flames are fanned with the wings of the holy 
dove, and whose spirits shine and burn with 
that fire which the holy Jesus came to en- 
kindle upon the earth. 



THE EPICURES FEAST. 87 



THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 

T ET us eat and drink ; for to-morrow we 
-" die." This is the epicure's proverb, begun 
upon a weak mistake, started by chance from 
the discourses of drink, and thought witty by 
the undiscerning company, and prevailed in- 
finitely, because it struck their fancy luckily, 
and maintained the merry-meeting ; but, as it 
happens commonly to such discourses, so this 
also, when it comes to be examined by the con- 
sultations of the morning, and the sober hours 
of the day, it seems the most witless and the 
most unreasonable in the world. When Seneca 
describes the spare diet of Epicurus and Me- 
trodorus, he uses this expression : " Liberaliora 
sunt alimenta carceris ; sepositos ad capitale 
supplicium, non tarn anguste, qui occisurus est, 
pascit," — The prison keeps a better table ; and 
he that is to kill the criminal to-morrow morn- 
ing gives him a better supper over night. By 
this he intended to represent his meal to be 
very short ; for as dying persons have but little 
stomach to feast high, so they that mean to cut 
their throat will think it a vain expense to please 
it with delicacies, which after the first altera- 
tion must be poured upon the ground, and 
looked upon as the worst part of the accursed 
thing. And there is also the same proportion 



88 THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 

of unreasonableness, that, because men shall die 
to-morrow, and by the sentence and unalter- 
able decree of God they are now descending to 
their graves, that therefore they should first 
destroy their reason, and then force dull time 
to run faster, that they may die sottish as 
beasts, and speedily as a fly. But they thought 
there was no life after this ; or if there were, 
it was without pleasure, and every soul thrust 
into a hole, and a dormitory of a span's length 
allowed for his rest, and for his walk ; and in 
the shades below no numbering of healths by 
the numeral letters of Philenium's name, no fat 
mullets, no oysters of Lucrinus, no Lesbian or 
Chian wines. Therefore now enjoy the deli- 
cacies of nature, and feel the descending wines 
distilled through the limbeck of thy tongue and 
larynx, and suck the delicious juice of fishes, 
the marrow of the laborious ox, and the tender 
lard of Apulian swine, and the condited bellies 
of the scarus ; but lose no time, for the sun 
drives hard, and the shadow is long, and the 
days of mourning are at hand, but the number 
of the days of darkness and the grave cannot 
be told. 

Thus they thought they discoursed wisely, 
and their wisdom was turned into folly; for all 
their artfl of providence, and witty securities 
of pleasure, were nothing but unmanly pro- 
logues to death, fear and folly, sensuality and 



THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 89 

beastly pleasures. But they are to be excused 
rather than we. They placed themselves in 
the order of beasts and birds, and esteemed 
their bodies nothing but receptacles of flesh 
and wine, larders and pantries ; and their soul 
the fine instrument of pleasure and brisk re- 
ception, of relishes and gusts, reflections and 
duplications of delight ; and therefore they 
treated themselves accordingly. But then why 
we should do the same things, who are led by 
other principles, and a more severe institution, 
and better notices of immortality, who under- 
stand what shall happen to a soul hereafter, 
and know that this time is but a passage to 
eternity, this body but a servant to the soul, 
this soul a minister to the spirit, and the whole 
man in order to God and to felicity; this, I 
say, is more unreasonable than to eat aconite 
to preserve our health, and to enter into the 
flood that we may die a dry death ; this is a 
perfect contradiction to the state of good 
things, w T hither we are designed, and to all 
the principles of a wise philosophy, wdiereby 
we are instructed that we may become wise 
unto salvation. 

Plenty and the pleasures of the world are 
no proper instruments of felicity. It is neces- 
sary that a man have some violence done to 
himself before he can receive them : for na- 
ture's bounds are, " non esurire, non sitire, non 



90 THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 

algere" to be quit from hunger and thirst and 
cold, — that is, to have nothing upon us that 
puts us to pain ; against which she hath made 
provisions by the fleece of the sheep and the 
skins of the beasts, by the waters of the foun- 
tain and the herbs of the field ; and of these 
no good man is destitute, for that share that he 
can need to fill those appetites and necessities 
he cannot otherwise avoid. For it is unimagin- 
able that nature should be a mother, natural 
and indulgent to the beasts of the forest, and 
the spawn of fishes, to every plant and fungus, 
to cats and owls, to moles and bats, making 
her storehouses always to stand open to them ; 
and that, for the Lord of all these, even to the 
noblest of her productions, she should have 
made no provisions, and only produced in us 
appetites sharp as the stomach of wolves, troub- 
lesome as the tiger's hunger, and then run 
away, leaving art and chance, violence and 
study, to feed us and to clothe us. This is so 
far from truth, that we are certainly more pro- 
vided for by nature than all the world besides ; 
for everything can minister to us ; and we can 
pass into none of nature's cabinets, but we can 
find our table spread : so that what David said 
to God, " Whither shall I go from thy pres- 
ence ? If I go to heaven, thou art there ; if I 
descend to the deep, thou art there also ; if I 
take the wings of the morning, and flee into 



THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 91 

the uttermost parts of the wilderness, even 
there thou wilt find me out, and thy right 
hand shall uphold me," we may say it concern- 
ing our table and our wardrobe. If we go 
into the fields, we find them tilled by the mer- 
cies of heaven, and watered with showers from 
God, to feed us, and to clothe us. If we go 
down into the deep, there God hath multiplied 
our stores, and filled a magazine which no 
hunger can exhaust. The air drops down deli- 
cacies, and the wilderness can sustain us ; and 
all that is in nature, that which feeds lions, and 
that which the ox eats, that which the fishes 
live upon, and that which is the provision for 
the birds, all that can keep us alive. And if we 
consider that of the beasts and birds, for whom 
nature hath provided but one dish, it may be 
flesh or fish, or herbs or flies, and these also we 
secure with guards from them, and drive away 
birds and beasts from that provision which na- 
ture made for them, yet seldom can we find 
that any of these perish with hunger ; much 
rather shall we find that we are secured by the 
securities proper for the more noble creatures 
by that Providence that disposes all things ; by 
that mercy that gives us all things which to 
other creatures are ministered singly ; by that 
labor that can procure what we need ; by that 
wisdom that can consider concerning future 
necessities ; by that power that can force it 



92 THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 

from inferior creatures ; and by that temper- 
ance which can fit our meat to our necessities. 
For if we go beyond what is needful, as we 
find sometimes more than was promised, and 
very often more than we need, so we disorder 
the certainty of our felicity, by putting that to 
hazard which nature hath secured. For it is 
not certain, that, if we desire to have the 
wealth of Susa, or garments stained with the 
blood of the Tyrian fish, that, if we desire to 
feed like Philoxenus, or to have tables laden 
like the boards of Vitellius, that we shall never 
want. It is not nature that desires these 
things, but lust and violence ; and by a disease 
we entered into the passion and the necessity, 
and in that state of trouble it is likely we may 
dwell forever, unless we reduce our appetites 
to nature's measures. And therefore it is that 
plenty and pleasures are not the proper instru- 
ments of felicity. Because felicity is not a 
jewel that can be locked in one man's cabinet. 
God intended that all men should be made 
happy ; and he that gave to all men the same 
natural desires, and to all men provision of 
satisfactions by the same meats and drinks, 
intended that it should not go beyond that 
measure of good things, which corresponds to 
those desirefl which all men naturally have. 

He that cannot be satisfied with common 
provision, hath a bigger need than he that 



THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 93 

can ; it is harder, and more contingent, and 
more difficult, and more troublesome for him 
to be satisfied. " I feed sweetly," said Epicu- 
rus, " upon bread and water, those sweet and 
easy provisions of the body, and I defy the 
pleasures of costly provisions " ; and the man 
was so confident that he had the advantage 
over wealthy tables, that he thought himself 
happy as the immortal gods. For these pro- 
visions are easy, they are to be gotten without 
amazing cares ; no man needs to flatter if he 
can live as nature did intend : " Magna pars 
libertatis est bene moratus venter " ; he need 
not swell his apcounts, and intricate his spirit 
with arts of subtilty and contrivance ; he can 
be free from fears, and the chances of the 
world cannot concern him. And this is true, 
not only in those severe and anchoretical and 
philosophical persons, who lived meanly as a 
sheep, and without variety as the Baptist, but 
in the same proportion it is also true in every 
man that can be contented with that which is 
honestly sufficient. Maximus Tyrius considers 
concerning the felicity of Diogenes, a poor 
Sinopean, having not so much nobility as to 
be born in the better parts of Greece : but he 
saw that he was compelled by no tyrant to 
speak or do ignobly ; he had no fields to till, 
and therefore took no care to buy cattle, and 
to hire servants ; he was not distracted when a 



94 THE EPICURES FEAST. 

rent-day came, and feared not when the wise 
Greeks played the fool and fought who should 
be lord of that field that lay between Thebes 
and Athens ; he laughed to see men scramble 
for dirty silver, and spend ten thousand Attic 
talents for the getting the revenues of two 
hundred philippics ; he went with his staff and 
bag into the camp of the Phocenses, and the 
soldiers reverenced his person and despised his 
poverty, and it was truce with him whosoever 
had wars ; and the diadem of kings and the 
purple of the emperors, the mitre of high- 
priests and the divining-staff of soothsayers, 
were things of envy and ambition, the pur- 
chase of danger, and the rewards of a mighty 
passion ; and men entered into them by trouble 
and extreme difficulty, and dwelt under them 
as a man under a falling roof, or as Damocles 
under the tyrant's sword, sleeping like a con- 
demned man ; and let there be what pleasure 
men can dream of in such broken slumbers, 
yet the fear of waking from this illusion, and 
parting from this fantastic pleasure, is a pain 
and torment which the imaginary felicity can- 
not pay for. 

All our trouble is from within us ; and if a 
dish of lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all 
my heats, so that I shall have neither thirst 
nor pride, lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, 
I am lodged in the bosom of felicity ; and, in- 



THE EPICURE'S FEAST, 95 

deed, no men sleep so soundly as they that lay 
their head upon nature's lap. For a single 
dish, and a clean chalice lifted from the springs, 
can cure my hunger and thirst ; but the meat 
of Ahasuerus's feast cannot satisfy my ambition 
and my pride. He, therefore, that hath the 
fewest desires and the most quiet passions, 
whose wants are soon provided for, and whose 
possessions cannot be disturbed with violent 
fears, he that dwells next door to satisfaction, 
and can carry his needs and lay them down 
where he pleases, — this man is the happy 
man ; and this is not to be done in great de- 
signs and swelling fortunes. For as it is in 
plants which nature thrusts forth from her 
navel, she makes regular provisions, and dresses 
them with strength and ornament, with easiness 
and full stature ; but if you thrust a jessamine 
there where she would have had a daisy grow, 
or bring the tall fir from dwelling in his own 
country, and transport the orange- or the al- 
mond-tree near the fringes of the north star, 
nature is displeased, and becomes unnatural, 
and starves her sucklings, and renders you a 
return less than your charge and expectation. 
So it is in all our appetites ; when they are 
natural and proper, nature feeds them and 
makes them healthful and lusty, as the coarse 
issue of the Scythian clown ; she feeds them 
and makes them easy without cares and costly 



96 THE EPICURE'S FEAST. 

passions. But if you thrust an appetite into 
her which she intended not, she gives you 
sickly and uneasy banquets, you must struggle 
with her for every drop of milk she gives be- 
yond her own needs ; you may get gold from 
her entrails, and at a great charge provide or- 
naments for your queens and princely women : 
but your lives are spent in the purchase ; and 
when you have got them you must have more ; 
for these cannot content you, nor nourish the 
spirit. A man must labor infinitely to get 
more than he needs ; but to drive away thirst 
and hunger, a man needs not sit in the fields 
of the oppressed poor, nor lead armies, nor 
break his sleep, nor suffer shame and danger, 
and envy and affront, and all the retinue of 
infelicity. 

If men did but know what felicity dwells in 
the cottage of the poor man, how sound his 
sleep, how quiet his breast, how composed his 
mind, how free from care, how easy his pro- 
vision, how healthful his morning, how sober 
his night, how moist his mouth, how joyful his 
heart, they would never admire the noises and 
the diseases, the throng of passions and the 

violence of unnatural appetites, that fill the 
houses of the luxurious and the heart of the 
anil >it ions. These which you call pleasures arc 
but the imagery and fantastic appearances, and 
such appearances even poor men may have. 



THE EPICURES FEAST. 97 

It is like felicity, that the king of Persia should 
come to Babylon in the winter, and to Susa in 
the summer ; and be attended with all the ser- 
vants of one hundred and twenty-seven prov- 
inces, and with all the princes of Asia. It is like 
this, that Diogenes went to Corinth in the time 
of vintage, and to Athens when winter came ; 
and instead of courts, visited the temples and 
the schools, and was pleased in the society of 
scholars and learned men, and conversed with 
the students of all Asia and Europe. If a man 
loves privacy, the poor fortune can have that 
when princes cannot ; if he loves noises, he can 
go to markets and to courts, and may glut 
himself with strange faces and strange voices 
and strange manners, and the wild design of 
all the world. And when that day comes 
in which we shall die, nothing of the eating 
and drinking remains, nothing of the pomp and 
luxury, but the sorrow to part with it, and 
shame to have dwelt there where wisdom and 
virtue seldom come, unless it be to call men to 
sober counsels, to a plain and a severe and 
more natural way of living ; and when Lucian 
derides the dead princes and generals, and says 
that in hell they go up and down selling salt 
meats and crying mussels, or begging ; and he 
brings in Philip of Macedon, mending of shoes 
in a little stall ; he intended to represent, that in 
the shades below, and in the state of the grave, 

7 



98 INTEMPERANCE. 

the princes and voluptuous have a being differ- 
ent from their present plenty; but that their 
condition is made contemptible and miserable 
by its disproportion to their lost and perishing 
voluptuousness. The result is this, that Tiresias 
told the ghost of Menippus, inquiring what 
state of life was nearest to felicity, the private 
life, that which is free from tumult and vanity, 
noise and luxury, business and ambition, near- 
est to nature, and a just entertainment to 
our necessities ; that life is nearest to felicity. 
Therefore -despise the swellings and the dis- 
eases of a disordered life, and a proud vanity ; 
be troubled for no outward thing beyond its 
merit, enjoy the present temperately, and you 
cannot choose but be pleased to see that you 
have so little share in the follies and miseries 
of the intemperate world. 



INTEMPERANCE. 

"INTEMPERANCE in eating and drinking is 
-*■ an enemy to health ; which is, as one calls 
it, " ansa voluptatum et condimentum vitce " ; 
it is that handle by which we can apprehend 
and perceive pleasures, and that sauce that 
only makes life delicate ; for what content can 
a full table administer to a man in a fever ? 



INTEMPERANCE. 99 

Health is the opportunity of wisdom, the fair- 
est scene of religion, the advantages of the 
glorifications of God, the charitable ministries 
to men ; it is a state of joy and thanksgiving, 
and in every of its periods feels a pleasure from 
the blessed emanations of a merciful Provi- 
dence. The world does not minister, does 
not feel, a greater pleasure, than to be newly 
delivered from the racks or the gratings of the 
stone, and the torments and convulsions of a 
sharp colic ; and no organs, no harp, no lute, 
can sound out the praises of the Almighty 
Father so sprightfully, as the man that rises 
from his bed of sorrows, and considers what an 
excellent difference he feels from the groans 
and intolerable accents of yesterday. 

When Cyrus had espied Astyages and his 
fellows coming drunk from a banquet, laden 
with variety of follies and filthiness, their legs 
failing them, their eyes red and staring, coz- 
ened with a moist cloud, and abused by a 
doubled object, their tongues full of sponges, 
and their heads no wiser, he thought they 
were poisoned : and he had reason ; for what 
malignant quality can be more venomous and 
hurtful to a man than the effect of an intem- 
perate goblet and a full stomach? It poisons 
both the soul and body. All poisons do not 
kill presently, and this will in process of time, 
and hath formidable effects at present. 



100 INTEMPERANCE. 

But, therefore, methinks the temptations 
which men meet withal from without, are 
in themselves most unreasonable and soon- 
est confuted by us. He that tempts me to 
drink beyond my measure, civilly invites me 
to a fever, and to lay aside my reason as 
the Persian women did their garments and 
their modesty at the end of feasts ; and all 
the question then will be, which is the worst 
evil, to refuse your uncivil kindness, or to 
suffer a violent headache, or to lay up heaps 
big enough for an English surfeit. Creon 
in the tragedy said well, "It is better for 
me to grieve thee, O stranger, or to be af- 
ronted by thee, than to be tormented by thy 
kindness the next day and the morrow after." 

It is reported concerning Socrates, that 
when Athens was destroyed by the plague, 
he in the midst of all the danger escaped 
untouched by sickness, because by a spare 
and severe diet he had within him no tu- 
mult of disorderly humors, no factions in his 
blood, no loads of moisture prepared for char- 
nel-houses or the sickly hospitals ; but a vig- 
orous heat, and a well-proportioned radical 
moisture ; he had enough for health and study, 
philosophy and religion, for the temples and 
the academy, but no superfluities to be spent 
in groans and sickly nights. Strange it is that 
for the stomach, which is scarce a span long, 



INTEMPERANCE. 101 

there should be provided so many furnaces and 
ovens, huge fires and an army of cooks, cellars 
swimming with wine, and granaries sweating 
with corn ; and that into one belly should 
enter the vintage of many nations, the spoils 
of distant provinces, and the shell-fishes of sev- 
eral seas. When the heathens feasted their 
gods, they gave nothing but a fat ox, a ram, 
or a kid ; they poured a little wine upon the 
altar, and burned a handful of gum : but when 
they feasted themselves, they had many vessels 
filled with Campanian wine, turtles of Liguria, 
Sicilian beeves, and wheat from Egypt, wild 
boars from Illyrium, and Grecian sheep ; vari- 
ety, and load, and cost, and curiosity : and so 
do we. It is so little we spend in religion, and 
so very much upon ourselves, so little to the 
poor, and so without measure to make our- 
selves sick, that we seem to be in love with 
our own mischief, and so passionate for neces- 
sity and want, that we strive all the ways we 
can to make ourselves need more than nature 
intended. I end this consideration with the 
saying of the cynic : " It is to be wondered at, 
that men eat so much for pleasure sake ; and 
yet for the same pleasure should not give over 
eating, and betake themselves to the delights 
of temperance, since to be healthful and holy 
is so great a pleasure." However, certain it is 
that no man ever repented that he arose from 



102 INTEMPERANCE. 

the table sober, healthful, and with his wits 
about him ; but very many have repented that 
they sat so long, till their bellies swelled, and 
their health, and their virtue, and their God is 
departed from them. 

Intemperance is the nurse of vice. It 
makes rage and choler, pride and fantastic 
principles ; it makes the body a sea of hu- 
mors, and those humors the seat of violence. 
By faring deliciously every day, men become 
senseless of the evils of mankind, inapprehen- 
sive of the troubles of their brethren, uncon- 
cerned in the changes of the world, and the 
cries of the poor, the hunger of the father- 
less, and the thirst of widows. Tyrants, said 
Diogenes, never come from the cottages of 
them that eat pulse and coarse fare, but from 
the delicious beds and banquets of the effemi- 
nate and rich feeders. For, to maintain plenty 
and luxury, sometimes wars are necessary, and 
oppressions and violence : but no landlord did 
ever grind the face of his tenants, no prince 
ever sucked blood from his subjects, for the 
maintenance of a sober and a moderate propor- 
tion of good things. 

Intemperance is a perfect destruction of wis- 
dom. A full-gorged belly never produced a 
Sprightly mind : and therefore these kind of 
men are called " slow bellies " ; so St. Paul con- 
cerning the intemperate Cretans, out of their 



INTEMPERANCE. 103 

own poet. They are like the tigers of Brazil, 
which when they are empty are bold and swift 
and full of sagacity, but being full, sneak away 
from the barking of a village dog. So are these 
men, wise in the morning, quick and fit for 
business ; but when the sun gives the sign to 
spread the tables, and intemperance brings in 
the messes, and drunkenness fills the bowls, 
then the man falls away and leaves a beast in 
his room. A full meal is like Sisera's banquet, 
at the end of which there is a nail struck into a 
man's head ; it knocks a man down, and nails 
his soul to the sensual mixtures of the body. 
For what wisdom can be expected from them 
whose soul dwells in clouds of meat, and floats 
up and down in wine, like the spilled cups 
which fell from their hands when they could 
lift them to their heads no longer ? It is a per- 
fect shipwreck of a man ; the pilot is drunk, 
and the helm dashed in pieces, and the ship 
first reels, and by swallowing too much is itself 
swallowed up at last. And therefore the mad- 
ness of the young fellows of Agrigentum, who, 
being drunk, fancied themselves in a storm, and 
the house the ship, was more than the wild 
fancy of their cups ; it was really so, they were 
all cast away, they were broken in pieces by 
the foul disorder of the storm. The senses lan- 
guish, the spark of divinity that dwells within 
is quenched ; and the mind snorts, dead with 



104 INTEMPERANCE. 

sleep and fulness in the fouler regions of the 
belly. 

So have I seen the eye of the world looking 
upon a fenny bottom, and drinking up too free 
draughts of moisture, gathered them into a 
cloud, and that cloud crept about his face, and 
made him first look red, and then covered him 
with darkness and an artificial night : so is our 
reason at a feast. The clouds gather about the 
head ; and according to the method and period 
of the children, and productions of darkness, it 
first grows red, and that redness turns into an 
obscurity and a thick mist, and reason is lost 
to all use and profitableness of wise and sober 
discourses. A cloud of folly and distraction 
darkens the soul, and makes it crass and mate- 
rial, polluted and heavy, clogged and laden like 
the body; and there cannot be anything said 
worse : reason turns into folly, wine and flesh 
into a knot of clouds, the soul itself into a body, 
and the spirit into corrupted meat. There is 
nothing left but the rewards and portions of a 
fool, to be reaped and enjoyed there, where 
flesh and corruption shall dwell to eternal ages ; 
their heads are gross, their souls are emerged 
in matter, and drowned in the moistures of an 
unwholesome cloud ; they are dull of hearing, 
slow in apprehension, and to action they are as 
unable as the hands of a child who too hastily 
hath broken the enclosures of his first dwelling. 



INTEMPERANCE. 105 

And now, after all this, I pray consider what 
a strange madness and prodigious folly possess 
many men, that they love to swallow death and 
diseases and dishonor, with an appetite which 
no reason can restrain. We expect our ser- 
vants should not dare to touch what we have 
forbidden to them ; we are watchful that our 
children should not swallow poisons and filthi- 
ness and unwholesome nourishment; we take 
care that they should be well-mannered and 
civil and of fair demeanor ; and we ourselves 
desire to be, or at least to be accounted, wise, 
and would infinitely scorn to be called fools ; 
and we are so great lovers of health that we 
will buy it at any rate of money or observance : 
and then for honor ; it is that which the chil- 
dren of men pursue with passion, it is one of the 
noblest rewards of virtue, and the proper orna- 
ment of the wise and valiant ; and yet all these 
things are not valued or considered when a 
merry meeting, or a looser feast, calls upon the 
man to act a scene of folly and madness, and 
healthlessness and dishonor. We do to God 
what we severely punish in our servants ; we 
correct our children for their meddling with 
dangers which themselves prefer before immor- 
tality ; and though no man thinks himself fit to 
be despised, yet he is willing to make himself 
a beast, a sot, and a ridiculous monkey, with 
the follies and vapors of wine ; and when he is 



106 INTEMPERANCE. 

high in drink or fancy, proud as a Grecian ora- 
tor in the midst of his popular noises, at the 
same time he shall talk such dirty language, 
such mean low things, as may well become a 
changeling and a fool, for whom the stocks are 
prepared by the laws, and the just scorn of 
men. 

Every drunkard clothes his head with a 
mighty scorn, and makes himself lower at that 
time than the meanest of his servants. The 
boys can laugh at him when he is led like a 
cripple, directed like a blind man, and speaks, 
like an infant, imperfect noises, lisping with a 
full and spongy tongue, and an empty head, and 
a vain and foolish heart. So cheaply does he 
part with his honor for drink or loads of meat ; 
for which honor he is ready to die, rather than 
hear it to be disparaged by another ; when him- 
self destroys it, as bubbles perish with the breath 
of children. Do not the laws of all wise na- 
tions mark the drunkard for a fool, with the 
meanest and most scornful punishment ? And 
is there anything in the world so foolish as a 
man that is drunk? But, good God ! what an 
intolerable sorrow hath seized upon great por- 
tions of mankind, that this folly and madness 
should possess the greatest spirits and the wit- 
tiest men, the best company, the most sensible 
of the word honor, and the most jealous of 
losing the shadow, and the most careless of the 



MARRIAGE. 107 

thing ? Is it not a horrid thing, that a wise or 
a crafty, a learned or a noble person, should 
dishonor himself as a fool, destroy his body as a 
murderer, lessen his estate as a prodigal, dis- 
grace every good cause that he can pretend to 
by his relation, and become an appellative of 
scorn, a scene of laughter or derision, and all 
for the reward of forgetfdlness and madness ? 
for there are in immoderate drinking no other 
pleasures. 

I end with the saying of a wise man : He is 
fit to sit at the table of the Lord, and to feast 
with saints, who moderately uses the creatures 
which God hath given him: but he that de- 
spises even lawful pleasures, shall not only sit 
and feast with God, but reign together with 
him, and partake of his glorious kingdom. 



MARKIAGE. 

HHHE first blessing God gave to man was 
•*- society ; and that society was a marriage, 
and that marriage was confederate by God 
himself, and hallowed by a blessing: and at 
the same time, and for very many descending 
ages, not only by the instinct of nature, but by 
a superadded forwardness, (God himself inspir- 
ing the desire,) the world was most desirous of 



108 MARRIAGE. 

children, impatient of barrenness, accounting 
single life a curse, and a childless person hated 
by God. The world was rich and empty, and 
able to provide for a more numerous posterity 
than it had. When a family could drive their 
herds, and set their children upon camels, and 
lead them till they saw a fat soil watered with 
rivers, and there sit down without paying rent, 
they thought of nothing but to have great fam- 
ilies, that their own relations might swell up 
to a patriarchate, and their children be enough 
to possess all the regions that they saw, and 
their grandchildren become princes, and them- 
selves build cities and call them by the name 
of a child, and become the fountain of a 
nation. 

This was the consequent of the first bless- 
ing, " Increase and multiply." The next 
blessing was the promise of the Messiah ; and 
that also increased in men and women a won- 
derful desire of marriage : for as soon as God 
had chosen the family of Abraham to be the 
blessed line from whence the world's Re- 
deemer should descend according to the flesh, 
every of his daughters hoped to have the 
honor to be his mother, or his grandmother, 
or something of his kindred ; and to be child- 
less in Israel was a sorrow to the Hebrew 
women, great as the slavery of Egypt, or their 
dishonors in the land of their captivity. 



MARRIAGE. 109 

But when the Messiah was come, and the 
doctrine was published, and his ministers but 
few, and his disciples were to suffer persecu- 
tion, and to be of an unsettled dwelling, and 
the nation of the Jews, in the bosom and so- 
ciety of which the Church especially did dwell, 
were to be scattered and broken all in pieces 
with fierce calamities, and the world was apt to 
calumniate and to suspect and dishonor Chris- 
tians upon pretences and unreasonable jeal- 
ousies, and that to all these purposes the state 
of marriage brought many inconveniences ; it 
pleased God in this new creation to inspire into 
the hearts of his servants a disposition and 
strong desire to lead a single life, lest the state 
of marriage should in that conjunction of things 
become an accidental impediment to the dis- 
semination of the gospel, which called men 
from a confinement in their domestic charges 
to travel, and flight, and poverty, and diffi- 
culty, and martyrdom. Upon this necessity 
the Apostles and apostolical men published 
doctrines, declaring the advantages of single 
life, not by any commandment of the Lord, 
but by the spirit of prudence, for the present 
and then incumbent necessities, and in order to 
the advantages which did accrue to the public 
ministries and private piety. 

Upon this occasion it grew necessary for the 
Apostle to state the question right, and to do 



110 MARRIAGE. 

honor to the holy rite of marriage, and to 
snatch the mystery from the hands of zeal 
and folly, and to place it in Christ's right hand, 
that all its beauties might appear, and a pres- 
ent convenience might not bring in a false 
doctrine, and a perpetual sin, and an intoler- 
able mischief. 

Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue ; 
and though marriage hath cares, yet the single 
life hath desires, which are more troublesome 
and more dangerous, and often end in sin, 
while the cares are but instances of duty and 
exercises of piety ; and therefore, if single life 
hath more privacy of devotion, yet marriage 
hath more necessities and more variety of it, 
and is an exercise of more graces. Here is the 
proper scene of piety and patience, of the duty 
of parents and the charity of relatives ; here 
kindness is spread abroad, and love is united 
and made firm as a centre. Marriage is the 
nursery of heaven ; the virgin sends prayers 
to God, but she carries but one soul to him ; 
but the state of marriage fills up the numbers 
of the elect, and hath in it the labor of love 
and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of 
society and the union of hands and hearts ; it 
hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, 
than the single life ; it hath more care, but less 
(lunger ; it is more merry, and more sad ; is 
fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies 



MARRIAGE. Ill 

under more burdens, but is supported by all 
the strengths of love and charity, and those 
burdens are delightful. 

Marriage is the mother of the world, and pre- 
serves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, 
and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the 
heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweet- 
ness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in 
singularity ; but marriage, like the useful bee, 
builds a house, and gathers sweetness from 
every flower, and labors and unites into socie- 
ties and republics, and sends out colonies, and 
feeds the world with delicacies, and obeys their 
king, and keeps order, and exercises many vir- 
tues, and promotes the interest of mankind, 
and is that state of good things to which God 
hath designed the present constitution of the 
world. 

They that enter into the state of marriage, 
cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet 
of the greatest interest in the world, next to 
the last throw for eternity. Life or death, 
felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power 
of marriage. A woman indeed ventures most, 
for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an 
evil husband ; she must dwell upon her sorrow, 
and hatch the eggs which her own folly or in- 
felicity hath produced ; and she is more under 
it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of 
prerogative ; and the woman may complain to 



112 MARRIAGE. 

God as subjects do of tyrant princes, but other- 
wise she hath no appeal in the causes of un- 
kindness. And though the man can run from 
many hours of his sadness, yet he must return 
to it again ; and when he sits among his neigh- 
bors, he remembers the objection that lies in 
his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, 
and the pedlers, and the fruiterers, shall tell of 
this man, when he is carried to his grave, that 
he lived and died a poor wretched person. 

The stags in the Greek epigram, whose 
knees were clogged with frozen snow upon 
the mountains, came down to the brooks of 
the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with 
the waters of the stream ; but there the frost 
overtook them, and bound them fast in ice 
till the young herdsman took them in their 
stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of 
many men, finding many inconveniences upon 
the mountains of single life, they descend into 
the valleys of marriage to refresh their troub- 
les, and there they enter into fetters, and are 
bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or 
woman's peevishness. And the worst of the 
evil is, they are to thank their own follies ; for 
they fell into the snare by entering an im- 
proper way. Christ and the Church were no 
ingredients in their choice. But as the Indian 
women enter into folly for the price of an ele- 
phant, and think their crime warrantable, so 



MARRIAGE. 113 

do men and women change their liberty tor a 
rich fortune, (like Eriphyle the Argive, she 
preferred gold before a good man,) and show 
themselves to be less than money, by overvalu- 
ing that to all the content and wise felicity of 
their lives : and when they have counted the 
money and their sorrows together, how will- 
ingly would they buy, with the loss of all that 
money, modesty, or sweet nature, to their rela- 
tive ! The odd thousand pounds would gladly 
be allowed in good-nature and fair manners. 

As very a fool is he that chooses for beauty 
principally ; " cui sunt eruditi oculi, et stulta 
mens " (as one said), whose eyes are witty, and 
their souls sensual. It is an ill band of affections 
to tie two hearts together by a little thread of 
j:ed and white. And they can love no longer but 
until the next ague comes ; and they are fond 
of each other, but, at the chance of fancy, or 
the small-pox, or childbearing, or care, or time, 
or anything that can destroy a pretty flower. 

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid 
all offences of each other in the beginning of 
their conversation. Every little thing can 
blast an infant blossom ; and the breath of 
the south can shake the little rings of the vine, 
when first they begin to curl like the locks of 
a new-weaned boy ; but when by age and con- 
solidation they stiffen into the hardness of a 
stem, and have by the warm embraces of the 



114 MARRIAGE. 

sun, and the kisses of heaven, brought forth 
their clusters, they can endure the storms of 
the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, 
and yet never be broken. So are the early 
unions of an unfixed marriage ; watchful and 
observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and 
careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind 
word. For infirmities do not manifest them- 
selves in the first scenes, but in the succession 
of a long society ; and it is not chance or weak- 
ness when it appears at first, but it is want of 
love or prudence, or it will be so expounded ; 
and that which appears ill at first, usually af- 
frights the inexperienced man or woman, who 
makes unequal conjectures, and fancies mighty 
sorrows by the proportions of the new and 
early unkindness. It is a veiy great passion, 
or a huge folly, or a certain want of love, that 
cannot preserve the colors and beauties of 
kindness so long as public honesty requires a 
man to wear their sorrows for the death of a 
friend. 

Plutarch compares a new marriage to a ves- 
sel before the hoops are on ; everything dis- 
solves their tender compaginations : but when 
the joints are stiffened and are tied by a firm 
compliance and proportioned bending, scarcely 
can it be dissolved without fire or the violence 
of iron. After the hearts of the man and the 
wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual 



MARRIAGE. 115 

confidence, and experience longer than artifice 
and pretence can last, there are a great many 
remembrances, and some things present, that 
dash all little unkindnesses in pieces. The 
little boy in the Greek epigram, that was 
creeping down a precipice, was invited to his 
safety by the sight of his mother's pap, when 
nothing else could entice him to return: and 
the bond of common children, and the sight 
of her that nurses what is most dear to him, 
and the endearments of each other in the 
course of a long society, and the same rela- 
tion, is an excellent security to redintegrate 
and to call that love back, which folly and 
trifling accidents would disturb. When it is 
come thus far, it is hard untwisting the 
knot ; but be careful in its first coalition 
that there be no rudeness done ; for if there 
be, it will forever after be apt to start and 
to be diseased. 

Let man and wife be careful to stifle little 
things, that as fast as they spring they be cut 
down and trod upon ; for if they be suffered 
to grow by numbers, they make the spirit 
peevish, and the society troublesome, and the 
affections loose and easy by an habitual aver- 
sation. Some men are more vexed with a 
fly than with a wound ; and when the gnats 
disturb our sleep, and the reason is disquieted, 
but not perfectly awakened, it is often seen 



116 MARRIAGE. 

that he is fuller of trouble than if, in the 
daylight of his reason, he were to contest 
with a potent enemy. In the frequent little 
accidents of a family, a man's reason cannot 
always be awake; and when his discourses 
are imperfect, and a trifling trouble- makes 
him yet more restless, he is soon betrayed to 
the violence of passion. It is certain that 
the man or woman are in a state of weak- 
ness and folly then, when they can be troub- 
led with a trifling accident ; and therefore 
it is not good to tempt their affections when 
they are in that state of danger. In this 
case the caution is, to subtract fuel from the 
sudden flame ; for stubble, though it be quickly 
kindled, yet it is as soon extinguished, if it be 
not blown by a pertinacious breath, or fed with 
new materials. Add no new provocations to 
the accident, and do not inflame this, and peace 
will soon return, and the discontent will pass 
away soon, as the sparks from the collision of 
a flint ; ever remembering, that discontents 
proceeding from daily little things do breed 
a secret undiscernible disease, which is more 
dangerous than a fever proceeding from a dis- 
cerned notorious surfeit. 

Let them be sure to abstain from all those 
things which by experience and observation 
they find to be contrary to each other. They 
that govern elephants, never appear before 



MARRIAGE. 117 

them in white ; and the masters of bulls keep 
from them all garments of blood and scarlet, as 
knowing that they will be impatient of civil 
usages and discipline when their natures are 
provoked by their proper antipathies. The 
ancients in their marital hieroglyphics used to 
depict Mercury standing by Venus, to signify 
that by fair language and sweet entreaties the 
minds of each other should be united; and 
hard by them, " suadam et gratias descripse- 
runt" they would have all deliciousness of 
manners, compliance and mutual observance 
to abide. 

Let the husband and wife infinitely avoid 
a curious distinction of mine and thine ; for 
this hath caused all the laws, and all the 
suits, and all the wars in the world. Let 
them who have but one person have also 
but one interest. Corvinus dwells in a farm 
and receives all its profits, and reaps and 
sows as he pleases, and eats of the corn and 
drinks of the wine ; it is his own : but all that 
also is his lord's, and for it Corvinus pays 
acknowledgment; and his patron hath such 
powers and uses of it as are proper to the 
lords ; and yet for all this, it may be the king's 
too, to all the purposes that he can need, and 
is all to be accounted in the census, and for 
certain services and times of danger. So are 
the riches of a family ; they are a woman's as 



118 MARRIAGE. 

well as a man's ; they are hers for need, and 
hers for ornament, and hers for modest de- 
light, and for the uses of religion and prudent 
charity: but the disposing them into portions 
of inheritance, the assignation of charges and 
governments, stipends and rewards, annuities 
and greater donatives, are the reserves of the 
superior right, and not to be invaded by the 
under-possessors. 

As the earth, the mother of all creatures 
here below, sends up all its vapors and proper 
emissions at the command of the sun, and yet 
requires them again to refresh her own needs, 
and they are deposited between them both, in 
the bosom of a cloud, as a common receptacle, 
that they may cool his flames, and yet descend 
to make her fruitful : so are the proprieties 
of a wife to be disposed of by her lord ; and 
yet all are for her provision, it being a part of 
his need to refresh and supply hers, and it 
serves the interest of both while it serves the 
necessities of either. 

These are the duties of them both, which 
have common regards and equal necessities and 
obligations ; and indeed there is scarce any 
matter of duty, but it concerns them both alike, 
and is only distinguished by names, and hath 
its variety by circumstances and little acci- 
dents : and what in one is called love, in the 
other is called reverence ; and what in the wife 



MARRIAGE. 119 

is obedience, the same in the man is duty. He 
provides, and she dispenses ; he gives com- 
mandments, and she rules by them ; he rules 
her by authority, and she rules him by love ; 
she ought by all means to please him, and he 
must by no means displease her. For as the 
heart is set in the midst of the body, and 
though it strikes to one side by the preroga- 
tive of nature, yet those throbs and constant 
motions are felt on the other side also, and the 
influence is equal to both : so it is in conjugal 
duties ; some motions are to the one side more 
than to the other, but the interest is on both, 
and the duty is equal in the several instances. 

The next inquiry is more particular, and 
considers the power and duty of the man. 
" Let every one of you so love his wife, even 
as himself"; she is as himself, the man hath 
power over her as over himself, and must love 
her equally. A husband's power over his wife 
is paternal and friendly, not magisterial and des- 
potic. The wife is "in perpetud tuteld" under 
conduct and counsel ; for the power a man 
hath is founded in the understanding, not in 
the will or force ; it is not a power of coercion, 
but a power of advice, and that government 
that wise men have over those who are fit to 
be conducted by them. Thou art to be a 
father and a mother to her, and a brother: 
and great reason, unless the state of marriage 



120 MARRIAGE. 

should be no better than the condition of an 
orphan. For she that is bound to leave father 
and mother and brother for thee, either is mis- 
erable, like a poor fatherless child, or else 
ought to find all these, and more, in thee. 

The dominion of a man over his wife is no 
other than as the soul rules the body ; for 
which it takes a mighty care, and uses it with 
a delicate tenderness, and cares for it in all 
contingencies, and watches to keep it from all 
evils, and studies to make for it fair provisions, 
and very often is led by its inclinations and 
desires, and does never contradict its appetites 
but when they are evil, and then also not with- 
out some trouble and sorrow ; and its govern- 
ment comes only to this : it furnishes the body 
with light and understanding, and the body 
furnishes the soul with hands and feet; the 
soul governs because the body cannot else be 
happy, but the government is no other than 
provision ; as a nurse governs a child when 
she causes him to eat, and to be warm, and 
dry, and quiet. And yet even the very gov- 
ernment itself is divided ; for man and wife in 
the family are as the sun and moon in the 
firmament of heaven ; he rules by day, and she 
by night, that is, in the lesser and more proper 
circles of her affairs, in the conduct of domes- 
tic provisions and necessary offices, and shines 
only by his light, and rules by his authority. 



MARRIAGE. 121 

And as the moon in opposition to the sun 
shines brightest, that is, then when she is in 
her own circles and separate regions, so is the 
authority of the wife then most conspicuous 
when she is separate and in her proper sphere ; 
li in gynceceo" in the nursery and offices of do- 
mestic employment. But when she is in con- 
junction with the sun her brother, that is, in 
that place and employment in which his care 
and proper offices are employed, her light is 
not seen, her authority hath no proper busi- 
ness. But else there is no difference ; for they 
were barbarous people among whom wives 
were instead of servants ; and it is a sign of 
impotency and weakness to force the camels 
to kneel for their load, because thou hast not 
spirit and strength enough to climb : to make 
the affections and evenness of a wife bend by 
the flexures of a servant, is a sign the man 
is not wise enough to govern when another 
stands by. And as amongst men and women 
humility is the way to be preferred, so it is 
in husbands ; they shall prevail by cession, by 
sweetness and counsel, and charity and com- 
pliance. So that we cannot discourse of the 
man's right without describing the measures 
of his duty ; that, therefore, follows next. 

" Let him love his wife even as himself" : — 
that is his duty, and the measure of it too ; 
which is so plain, that, if he understands how 



122 MARRIAGE. 

he treats himself, there needs nothing be added 
concerning his demeanor towards her, save 
only that we add the particulars in which 
holy Scripture instances this general com- 
mandment. 

The first is, " Be not bitter against her " ; 
and this is the least index and signification of 
love ; a civil man is never bitter against a 
friend or a stranger, much less to him that 
enters under his roof, and is secured by the 
laws of hospitality. But a wife does all that 
and more : she quits all her interest for his 
love ; she gives him all that she can give ; she 
is much the same person as another can be the 
same, who is conjoined by love and mystery 
and religion, and all that is sacred and profane. 
They have the same fortune, the same family, 
the same children, the same religion, the same 
interest, the same flesh ; and therefore the 
Apostle urges, " No man hateth his own flesh, 
but nourisheth and cherisheth it " ; and he cer- 
tainly is strangely sacrilegious and a violator 
of the rights of hospitality and sanctuary, who 
uses her rudely, who is fled for protection not 
only to his house, but also to his heart and 
bosom. 

There is nothing can please a man without 
love ; and if a man be weary of the wise dis- 
courses of the Apostles, and of the innocency 
of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace 



MARRIAGE. 123 

or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and 
thistles from the choicest flowers of paradise ; 
for nothing can sweeten felicity itself, but love. 
But when a man dwells in love, then the breasts 
of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon 
the hill of Hermon, her eyes are fair as the 
light of heaven, she is a fountain sealed, and he 
can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay 
his sorrow down upon her lap, and can retire 
home as to his sanctuary and refectory, and his 
gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. 

No man can tell but he that loves his chil- 
dren, how many delicious accents make a man's 
heart dance in the pretty conversation of those 
dear pledges; their childishness, their stam- 
mering, their little angers, their innocence, 
their imperfections, their necessities, are so 
many little emanations of joy and comfort to 
him that delights in their persons and society. 
But he that loves not his wife and children 
feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of 
sorrows ; and blessing itself cannot make him 
happy : so that all the commandments of God 
enjoining a man to love his wife are nothing 
but so many necessities and capacities of joy. 
She that is loved is safe, and he that loves is 
joyful. 

The husband should nourish and cherish her ; 
he should refresh her sorrows and entice her 
fears into confidence and pretty arts of rest. 



124 MARRIAGE. 

But it will concern the prudence of the hus- 
band's love to make the cares and evils as 
simple and easy as he can, by doubling the joys 
and acts of a careful friendship, by tolerating 
her infirmities, (because by so doing he either 
cures her, or makes himself better,) by fairly 
expounding all the little traverses of society 
and communication, by taking everything by 
the right handle, as Plutarch's expression is ; 
for there is nothing but may be misinterpreted ; 
and yet if it be capable of a fair construction, 
it is the office of love to make it. Love will 
account that to be well said which, it may be, 
was not so intended ; and then it may cause it 
to be so, another time. 

Hither also is to be referred that he secure 
the interest of her virtue and felicity by a fair 
example ; for a wife to a husband is a line or 
superficies, — it hath dimensions of its own, but 
no motion or proper affections ; but commonly 
puts on such images of virtues or vices as are 
presented to her by her husband's idea : and if 
thou beest vicious, complain not that she is 
infected that lies in thy bosom ; the interest of 
whose love ties her to transcribe thy copy, and 
write after the character of thy manners. Paris 
was a man of pleasure, and Helena was an 
adulteress, and she added covetousness upon 
her own account. But Ulysses was a prudent 
man, and a wary counsellor, sober and severe ; 



MARRIAGE. 125 

and he efformed his wife into such imagery as 
he desired ; and she was chaste as the snows 
upon the mountains, diligent as the fatal sisters, 
always busy, and always faithful ; she had a 
lazy tongue and a busy hand. 

Above all the instances of love let him pre- 
serve towards her an inviolable faith, and an 
unspotted chastity ; for this is the marriage-ring ; 
it ties two hearts by an eternal band ; it is like 
the cherubim's flaming sword, set for the guard 
of paradise ; he that passes into that garden, 
now that it is immured by Christ and the 
Church, enters into the shades of death. No 
man must touch the forbidden tree, that in the 
midst of the garden, which is the tree of knowl- 
edge and life. Chastity is the security of love, 
and preserves all the mysteriousness like the 
secrets of a temple. Under this lock is deposit- 
ed security of families, the union of affections, 
the repairer of accidental breaches. This is a 
grace that is shut up and secured by all arts of 
heaven and the defence of laws, the locks and 
bars of modesty, by honor and reputation, by 
fear and shame, by interest and high regards ; 
and that contract that is intended to be forever 
is yet dissolved and broken by the violation of 
this. Nothing but death can do so much evil 
to the holy rites of marriage as unchastity and 
breach of faith can ; and by the laws of the Ro- 
mans a man might kill his daughter or his wife, 



126 MARRIAGE. 

if he surprised her in the breach of her holy 
vows, which are as sacred as the threads of life, 
secret as the privacies of the sanctuary, and 
holy as the society of angels. God that com- 
manded us to forgive our enemies left it in our 
choice, and hath not commanded us to forgive 
an adulterous husband or a wife ; but the offend- 
ed party's displeasure may pass into an eternal 
separation of society and friendship. Now in 
this grace it is fit that the wisdom and severity 
of the man should hold forth a pure taper, that 
his wife may, by seeing the beauties and trans- 
parency of that crystal, dress her mind and her 
body by the light of so pure reflections. It is 
certain he will expect it from the modesty and 
retirement, from the passive nature and colder 
temper, from the humility and fear, from the 
honor and love, of his wife, that she be pure 
as the eye of heaven : and therefore it is but 
reason that the wisdom and nobleness, the love 
and confidence, the strength and severity of the 
man should be as holy and certain in this grace 
as he is a severe exactor of it at her hands, 
who can more easily be tempted by another, 
and less by herself. 

These are the little- lines of a man's duty, 
which, like threads of light from the body of 
the sun, do clearly describe all the regions of 
his proper obligations. Now, concerning the 
woman's duty, although it consists in doing 



MARRIAGE. 127 

whatsoever her husband commands, and so 
receives measures from the rules of his gov- 
ernment, yet there are also some lines of life 
depicted upon her hands, by which she may 
read and know how to proportion out her duty 
to her husband. 

The first is obedience. The man's author- 
ity is love, and the woman's love is obedience ; 
for this obedience is no way founded in fear, 
but in love and reverence. We will add, that 
it is an effect of that modesty which, like ru- 
bies, adorns the necks and cheeks of women. 
It is modesty to advance and highly to honor 
them who have honored us by making us to 
be the companions of their dearest excellen- 
cies ; for the woman that went jpefore the man 
in the way of death, is commanded to follow 
him in the way of love ; and that makes the 
society to be perfect, and the union profitable, 
and the harmony complete. A wife never can ' 
become equal but by obeying. A ruling wom- 
an is intolerable. But that is not all ; for she 
is miserable, too : for it is a sad calamity for a 
woman to be joined to a fool or a weak person ; 
it is like a guard of geese to keep the capitol ; 
or as if a flock of sheep should read grave lec- 
tures to their shepherd, and give him orders 
when he shall conduct them to pasture. To 
be ruled by weaker people, to have a fool to 
one's master, is the fate of miserable and un 



128 MARRIAGE. 

blessed people : and the wife can be no ways 
happy unless she be governed by a prudent 
lord, whose commands are sober counsels, 
whose authority is paternal, whose orders are 
provisions, and whose sentences are charity. 

The next line of the woman's duty is com- 
pliance, which St. Peter calls " the hidden 
man of the heart, the ornament of a meek 
and a quiet spirit " ; and to it he opposes " the 
outward and pompous ornament of the body " ; 
concerning which, as there can be no partic- 
ular measure set down to all persons, but the 
proportions were to be measured by the cus- 
toms of wise people, the quality of the woman, 
and the desires of the man ; yet it is to be 
limited by Christian modesty and the usages 
of the more excellent and severe matrons. 
Menander in the comedy brings in a man turn- 
ing his wife from his house because she stained 
her hair yellow, which was then the beauty. 
A wise woman should not paint. A studious 
gallantry in clothes cannot make a wise man 
love his wife the better. Such gayeties are 
fit for tragedies, but not for the uses of life. 
" Decor occultus, et tecta venustas " ; that is the 
Christian woman's fineness, the hidden man of 
the heart, sweetness of manners, humble com- 
portment, fair interpretation of all addresses, 
ready compliances, high opinion of him, and 
mean of herself. 



MARRIAGE. 129 

To partake secretly, and in her heart, of all 
his joys and sorrows ; to believe him comely 
and fair, though the sun hath drawn a cypress 
over him ; (for as marriages are not to be con- 
tracted by the hands and eye, but with reason 
and the hearts, so are these judgments to be 
made by the mind, not by the sight ;) and dia- 
monds cannot make the woman virtuous, nor 
him to value her who sees her put them off, 
then, when charity and modesty are her bright- 
est ornaments. 

And indeed those husbands that are pleased 
with indecent gayeties of their wives, are like 
fishes taken with ointments and intoxicating 
baits, apt and easy for sport and mockery, but 
useless for food ; and when Circe had turned 
Ulysses's companions into hogs and monkeys, 
by pleasures and the enchantments of her brav- 
ery and luxury, they were no longer useful 
to her, she knew not what to do with them ; 
but on wise Ulysses she was continually en- 
amoured. Indeed the outward ornament is fit 
to take fools, but they are not worth the tak- 
ing ; but she that hath a wise husband must 
entice him to an eternal dearness by the veil 
of modesty, and the grave robes of chastity, 
the ornament of meekness, and the jewels of 
faith and charity : she must have no "fucus " 
but blushings ; her brightness must be purity, 
and she must shine round about with sweet- 
9 



130 MARRIAGE. 

nesses and friendship, and she shall be pleasant 
while she lives, and desired when she dies. If 
not, her grave shall be full of rottenness and 
dishonor, and her memory shall be worse after 
she is dead : " after she is dead " ; for that will 
be the end of all merry meetings ; and I choose 
this to be the last advice to both. 

Remember the days of darkness, for they 
are many ; the joys of the bridal chambers are 
quickly past, and the remaining portion of the 
state is a dull progress, without variety of joys, 
but not without the change of sorrows ; but 
that portion that shall enter into the grave 
must be eternal. It is fit that I should infuse 
a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and 
after the Egyptian manner serve up a dead 
man's bones at a feast ; I will only show it, 
and take it away again ; it will make the wine 
bitter, but wholesome. But those married 
pairs that live, as remembering that they 
must part again, and give an account how 
they treat themselves and each other, shall 
at that day of their death be admitted to 
glorious espousals ; and then they shall live 
again, be married to their Lord, and partake 
of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St. 
Peter and St. Paul, and all the married saints. 

All those things that now please us shall 
pass from us, or we from them ; but those 
things that concern the other life are per- 



THE ATHEIST. 131 

manent as the numbers of eternity : and al- 
though at the resurrection there shall be no 
relation of husband and wife, and no mar- 
riage shall be celebrated but the marriage 
of the Lamb ; yet then shall be remembered 
how men and women passed through this 
state, which is a type of that ; and from this 
sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to 
the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be 
their portion, and joys shall crown their heads, 
and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and 
in the heart of God to eternal ages. 



THE ATHEIST. 

YXTHO in the world is a verier fool, a more 
^ * ignorant, wretched person, than he that 
is an atheist ? A man may better believe 
there is no such man as himself, and that he 
is not in being, than that there is no God ; 
for himself can cease to be, and once was not, 
and shall be changed from what he is, and in 
very many periods of his life knows not that 
he is ; and so it is every night with him when 
he sleeps. But none of these can happen to 
God; and if he knows it not, he is a fool. 
Can anything in this world be more foolish 
than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven 



132 THE ATHEIST. 

and earth can come by chance, when all the 
skill of art is not able to make an oyster ? 
To see rare effects and no cause ; an excel- 
lent government and no prince ; a motion with- 
out an. immovable ; a circle without a centre ; 
a time without eternity ; a second without a 
first ; a thing that begins not from itself, and 
therefore not to perceive there is something 
from whence it does begin, which must be 
without beginning ; these things are so against 
philosophy and natural reason, that he must 
needs be a beast in his understanding that does 
not assent to them. This is the atheist: " The 
fool hath said in his heart there is no God " ; 
that is his character. The thing framed says 
that nothing framed it ; the tongue never made 
itself to speak, and yet talks against him that 
did ; saying, that which is made is, and that 
which made it is not. But this folly is as 
infinite as hell, as much without light or bound 
as the chaos or primitive nothing. But in this 
the devil never prevailed very far ; his schools 
were always thin at these lectures. Some 
few people have been witty against God, that 
taught them to speak before they knew how to 
spell a syllable ; but either they are monsters 
in their manners, or mad in their understand- 
ings, or ever find themselves confuted by a 
thunder or a plague, by danger or death. 



THE TONGUE. 133 



THE TONGUE. 



T> Y the use of the tongue, God hath distin- 
-*-* guished us from beasts ; and by the well 
or ill using it we are distinguished from one 
another ; and therefore though silence be inno- 
cent as death, harmless as a rose's breath to a 
distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of 
death than life ; and therefore when the Egyp- 
tians sacrificed to Harpocrates their god of 
silence, in the midst of their rites they cried 
out, " The tongue is an angel," good or bad, 
that is, as it happens. Silence was to them a 
god, but the tongue is greater ; it is the band 
of human intercourse, and makes men apt to 
unite in societies and republics ; and I remem- 
ber what one of the ancients said, that we are 
better in the company of a known dog than of 
a man whose speech is not known. A stranger 
to a stranger in his language is not as a man 
to a man ; for by voices and homilies, by ques- 
tions and answers, by narratives and invectives, 
by counsel and reproof, by praises and hymns, 
by prayers and glorifications, we serve God's 
glory and the necessities of men ; and by the 
tongue our tables are made to differ from man- 
gers, our cities from deserts, our churches from 
herds of beasts and flocks of sheep. 

But the tongue is a fountain both of bitter 



134 THE TONGUE. 

waters and of pleasant ; it sends forth blessing 
and cursing ; it praises God, and rails at men ; 
it is sometimes set on fire, and then it puts 
whole cities in combustion ; it is unruly, and no 
more to be restrained than the breath of a tem- 
pest ; it is volatile and fugitive : reason should 
go before it ; and, when it does not, repentance 
comes after it ; it was intended for an organ of 
the divine praises, but the devil often plays 
upon it, and then it sounds like the screech- 
owl, or the groans of death ; sorrow and shame, 
folly and repentance, are the notes and formi- 
dable accents of that discord. 

He that loves to talk much, must scrape 
materials together to furnish out the scenes 
and long orations ; and some talk themselves 
into anger, and some furnish out their dialogues 
with the lives of others ; either they detract 
or censure, or they flatter themselves, and tell 
their own stories with friendly circumstances ; 
and pride creeps up the sides of the discourse, 
and the man entertains his friend with his own 
panegyric ; or the discourse looks one way and 
rows another, and more minds the design than 
its own truth ; and most commonly will be so 
ordered that it shall please the company 



IDLE TALK. 135 



IDLE TALK. 



f ET no man think it a light matter that he 
-" spends his precious time in idle words ; let 
no man be so weary of what flies away too fast, 
and cannot be recalled, as to use arts and de- 
vices to pass the time away in vanity, which 
might be rarely spent in the interests of eter- 
nity. Time is given us to repent in, to appease 
the divine anger, to prepare for and hasten to 
the society of angels, to stir up our slackened 
wills, and enkindle our cold devotions, to weep 
for our daily iniquities, and to sigh after, and 
work for, the restitution of our lost inheritance ; 
and the reward is very inconsiderable that ex- 
changes all this for the pleasure of a voluble 
tongue : and indeed this is an evil that cannot 
be avoided by any excuse that can be made for 
words that are in any sense idle, though in all 
senses of their own nature and proper relations 
they be innocent. They are a throwing away 
something of that which is to be expended for 
eternity, and put on degrees of folly according 
as they are tedious and expensive of time to no 
good purposes. 

Great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is 
the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so 
have I heard that all the noises and prating of 
the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is 



136 IDLE TALK. 

hushed and appeased upon the instant of bring- 
ing upon them the light of a candle or torch. 
Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge 
checks the dissolutions of the tongue. But, 
every man as he is a fool and contemptible, so 
his tongue is hanged loose, being like a bell, 
in which there is nothing but tongue and noise. 
No prudence is a sufficient guard, or can 
always stand " in excuhiis" still watching, 
when a man is in perpetual floods of talk : for 
prudence attends after the manner of an angel's 
ministry; it is despatched on messages from 
God, and drives away enemies, and places 
guards, and calls upon the man to awake, and 
bids him send out spies and observers, and then 
goes about his own ministries above : but an 
angel does not sit by a man, as a nurse by the 
baby's cradle, watching every motion, and the 
lighting of a fly upon the child's Up. And so 
is prudence ; it gives rules, and proportions out 
our measures, and prescribes us cautions, and 
by general influences orders our particulars : 
but he that is given to talk cannot be secured 
by all this; the emissions of his tongue are 
beyond the general figures and lines of rule ; 
and he can no more be wise in every period of 
a long and running talk than a lutanist can 
deliberate and make every motion of his hand 
by the division of his notes to be chosen and 
distinctly voluntary. And hence it comes, that 



IDLE TALK. 137 

at every corner of the mouth a folly peeps out, 
or a mischief creeps in. A little pride and a 
great deal of vanity will soon escape, while the 
man minds the sequel of his tali, and not that 
ugliness of humor which the severe man that 
stood by did observe and was ashamed of. Do 
not many men talk themselves into anger, 
screwing up themselves with dialogues of fancy, 
till they forget the company and themselves ? 
And some men hate to be contradicted or inter- 
rupted, or to be discovered in their folly ; and 
some men being a little conscious, and not 
striving to amend by silence, they make it 
worse by discourse. A long story of them- 
selves, a tedious praise of another collaterally, 
to do themselves advantage ; a declamation 
against a sin, to undo the person or oppress the 
reputation of their neighbor ; unseasonable rep- 
etition of that which neither profits nor delights ; 
trifling contentions about a goat's beard or the 
blood of an oyster, anger and animosity, spite 
and rage, scorn and reproach, begun upon ques- 
tions which concern neither of the litigants ; 
fierce disputations ; strivings for what is past, 
and for what shall never be: these are the 
events of the loose and unwary tongue, which 
are like flies and gnats upon the margin of a 
pool ; they do not sting like an asp, or bite deep 
as a bear, yet they can vex a man into a fever 
and impatience, and make him incapable of 
rest and counsel. 



138 JESTING. 



JESTING. 

ECCLESIASTICAL History reports that 
■" many jests passed between St. Anthony, 
the father of the Hermits, and his scholar St. 
Paul ; and St. Hilarion is reported to have 
been very pleasant, and of facetious, sweet, 
and more lively conversation ; and indeed plais- 
ance, and joy, and a lively spirit, and a pleas- 
ant conversation, and the innocent caresses of 
a charitable humanity, is not forbidden ; and 
here in my text our conversation is commanded 
to be such, that it may minister grace, that 
is, favor, complacence, cheerfulness, and be 
acceptable and pleasant to the hearer : and so 
must be our conversation ; it must be as far 
from sullenness as it ought to be from light- 
ness, and a cheerful spirit is the best convoy 
for religion ; and though sadness does in some 
cases become a Christian, as being an index of 
a pious mind, of compassion, and a wise, proper 
resentment of things, yet it serves but one end, 
being useful in the only instance of repent- 
ance ; and hath done its greatest works, not 
when it weeps and sighs, but when it hates and 
grows careful against sin. But cheerfulness 
and a festival spirit fills the soul full of har- 
mony, it composes music for churches and 
hearts, it makes and publishes glorifications of 



JESTING. 139 

God, it produces thankfulness and serves the 
end of charity ; and when the oil of gladness 
runs over, it makes bright and tall emissions of 
light and holy fires, reaching up to a cloud, 
and making joy round about. And therefore, 
since it is so innocent, and may be so pious 
and full of holy advantage, whatsoever can 
innocently minister to this holy joy does set 
forward the work of religion and charity. And 
indeed charity itself, which is the vertical top 
of all religion, is nothing else but a union of 
joys, concentred in the heart, and reflected 
from all the angles of our life and intercourse. 
It is a rejoicing in God, a gladness in our 
neighbor's good, a pleasure in doing good, a 
rejoicing with him ; and without love we can- 
not have any joy at all. It is this that makes 
children to be a pleasure, and friendship to be 
so noble and divine a thing ; and upon this 
account it is certain that all that which can 
innocently make a man cheerful does also 
make him charitable ; for grief, and age, and 
sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and 
troublesome ; but mirth and cheerfulness is 
content, and civil, and compliant, and com- 
municative, and loves to do good, and swells 
up to felicity only upon the wings of charity. 
Upon this account here is pleasure enough for 
a Christian at present ; and if a facetious dis- 
course, and an amicable friendly mirth, can 



140 COMMON SWEARING. 

refresh the spirit, and take it off from the vile 
temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying 
melancholy, it must needs be innocent and 
commendable. And we may as well be re- 
freshed by a clean and a brisk discourse as by 
the air of Campanian wines ; and our faces and 
our heads may as well be anointed and look 
pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse as 
with the fat of the balsam-tree ; and such a 
conversation no wise man ever did or ought to 
reprove. But when the jest hath teeth and 
nails, biting or scratching our brother, when 
it is loose and wanton, when it is unseasonable, 
and much, or many, when it serves ill pur- 
poses, or spends better time, then it is the 
drunkenness of the soul, and makes the spirit 
fly away, seeking for a temple where the mirth 
and the music is solemn and religious. 



COMMON SWEARING. 

A GAINST common swearing, St. Chrysos- 
■**« torn spends twenty homilies: and by the 
number and weight of arguments hath left this 
testimony, that it is a foolish vice, but hard to 
be cured ; infinitely unreasonable, but strangely 
prevailing ; almost as much without remedy as 
it is without pleasure ; for it enters first by 



COMMON SWEARING. Ml 

folly, and grows by custom, and dwells with 
carelessness, and is nursed by irreligion and 
want of the fear of God. It profanes the most 
holy things, and mingles dirt with the beams of 
the sun, follies and trifling talk interweaved 
and knit together with the sacred name of God. 
It placeth the most excellent of things in the 
meanest and basest circumstances ; it brings 
the secrets of heaven into the streets, dead 
men's bones into the temple. Nothing is a 
greater sacrilege than to prostitute the great 
name of God to the petulancy of an idle 
tongue, and blend it as an expletive to fill up 
the emptiness of a weak discourse. The name 
of God is so sacred, so mighty, that it rends 
mountains ; it opens the bowels of the deepest 
rocks, it casts out devils, and makes hell to 
tremble, and fills all the regions of heaven 
with joy. The name of God is our strength 
and confidence, the object of our worshippings, 
and the security of all our hopes ; and when 
God had given himself a name, and immured 
it with dread and reverence, like the garden 
of Eden with the swords of cherubims, none 
durst speak it but he whose lips were hallowed, 
and that at holy and solemn times, in a most 
holy and solemn place. 



142 FLATTERY. 



FLATTERY. 

npHIS is the mischief that is done by flattery ; 
-*- it is a design against the wisdom, against 
the repentance, against the growth and promo- 
tion of a man's soul. He that persuades an 
ugly, deformed man, that he is handsome, a 
short man that he is tall, a bald man that he 
hath a good head of hair, makes him to become 
ridiculous and a fool, but does no other mischief. 
But he that persuades his friend that is a goat 
in his manners, that he is a holy and a chaste 
person, or that his looseness is a sign of a quick 
spirit, or that it is not dangerous but easily par- 
donable, a trick of youth, a habit that old age 
will lay aside, as a man pares his nails, this 
man hath given great advantage to his friend's 
mischief; he hath made it grow in all the 
dimensions of the sin, till it grows intolerable, 
and perhaps unpardonable. And let it be con- 
sidered, what a fearful destruction and contra- 
diction of friendship or service it is, so to love 
myself and my little interest, as to prefer it 
before the soul of him whom I ought to love. 
Carneades said bitterly, but it had in it too 
many degrees of truth, that princes and great 
personages never learn to do anything per- 
fectly well but to ride the great horse, because 
the proud beast knows not how to flatter, but 



CONSOLATION. 143 

will as soon throw him off from his back as he 
will shake off the son of a porter. But a flat- 
terer is like a neighing horse, that neigheth 
under every rider, and is pleased with every- 
thing, and commends all that he sees, and 
tempts to mischief, and cares not, so his friend 
may but perish pleasantly. And indeed that is 
a calamity that undoes many a soul; we so 
love our peace, and sit so easily upon our own 
good opinions, and are so apt to flatter our- 
selves, and lean upon our own false supports, 
that we cannot endure to be disturbed or awak- 
ened from our pleasing lethargy. For we care 
not to be safe, but to be secure ; not to escape 
hell, but to live pleasantly ; we are not solici- 
tous of the event, but of the way thither ; and 
it is sufficient if we be persuaded all is well ; 
in the mean time we are careless whether in- 
deed it be so or no, and therefore we give pen- 
sions to fools and vile persons to abuse us, and 
cozen us of felicity. 



CONSOLATION. 

C\ OD glories in the appellative that he is the 
^ Father of mercies, and the God of all com- 
fort, and therefore to minister in the office is to 
become like God, and to imitate the charities 



144 CONSOLATION. 

of heaven ; and God hath fitted mankind for 
it ; he most needs it, and he feels his brother's 
wants by his own experience; and God hath 
given us speech and the endearments of soci- 
ety, and pleasantness of conversation, and pow- 
ers of seasonable discourse, arguments to allay 
the sorrow, by abating our apprehensions, and 
taking out the sting, or telling the periods of 
comfort, or exciting hope, or urging a precept, 
and reconciling our affections, and reciting 
promises, or telling stories of the divine mercy, 
or changing it into duty, or making the burden 
less by comparing it with greater, or by prov- 
ing it to be less than we deserve, and that it is 
so intended, and may become the instrument 
of virtue. And certain it is, that as nothing 
can better do it, so there is nothing greater 
for which God made our tongues, next to recit- 
ing his praises, than to minister comfort to a 
weary soul. And what greater measure can 
we have than that we should bring joy to our 
brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to 
heaven and round about, and cannot find so 
much rest as to lay his eyelids close together, 
than that thy tongue should be tuned with 
heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to 
listen for light and ease ; and when he per- 
ceives that there is such a thing in the world, 
and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, 
to begin to break out from the prison of his 



CONSOLATION. 145 

sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by 
little and little melt into showers and refresh- 
ment ? This is glory to thy voice, and employ- 
ment fit for the brightest angel. 

But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen 
earth, which was bound up with the images of 
death and the colder breath of the north ; and 
then the waters break from their enclosures, 
and melt with joy, and run in useful channels ; 
and the flies do rise again from their little 
graves in walls, and dance a while in the air, 
to tell that there is joy within, and that the 
great mother of creatures will open the stock 
of her new refreshment, become useful to man- 
kind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is 
the heart of a sorrowful man under the dis- 
courses of a wise comforter; he breaks from 
the despairs of the grave and the fetters and 
chains of sorrow, he blesses God, and he blesses 
thee, and he feels his life returning ; for to be 
miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be 
comforted ; and God is pleased with no music 
from below, so much as in the thanksgiving 
songs of relieved widows, of supported or- 
phans, of rejoicing and comforted and thank- 
ful persons. 

This part of communication does the work 
of God and of our neighbors, and bears us to 
heaven in streams of joy made by the over- 
flowings of our brother's comfort. It is a fear- 
10 



146 THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 

fill tiling to see a man despairing. None knows 
the sorrow and the intolerable anguish but 
themselves, and they that are damned ; and so 
are all the loads of a wounded spirit, when the 
staff of a man's broken fortune bows his head 
to the ground, and sinks like an osier under 
the violence of a mighty tempest. But there- 
fore in proportion to this I may tell the excel- 
lency of the employment, and the duty of that 
charity, which bears the dying and languishing 
soul from the fringes of hell to the seat of the 
brightest stars, wiiere God's face shines and 
reflects comforts forever and ever. 



THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 

TN the law, God gave his spirit in small pro- 
-*- portions, like the dew upon Gideon's fleece ; 
a little portion was wet sometimes with the 
dew of heaven, when all the earth besides was 
dry. And the Jews called it "filiam vocis" 
the daughter of a voice, still, and small, and 
seldom, and that by secret whispers, and some- 
times inarticulate, by way of enthusiasm rather 
than of instruction ; and God spake by the 
prophets, transmitting the sound as through an 
ergon-pipe, things which themselves oftentimes 
understood not. But in the gospel, the spirit 



THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 147 

is given without measure ; first poured forth 
upon our head Christ Jesus ; then descending 
upon the beard of Aaron, the fathers of the 
Church, and thence falling, like the tears of the 
balsam of Judea, upon the foot of the plant, 
upon the lowest of the people. And this is 
given regularly to all that ask it, to all that can 
receive it, and by a solemn ceremony, and con- 
veyed by a sacrament : and is now, not the 
daughter of a voice, but the mother of many 
voices, of divided tongues, and united hearts ; 
of the tongues of prophets, and the duty of 
saints ; of the sermons of apostles, and the wis- 
dom of governors. It is the parent of boldness 
and fortitude to martyrs, the fountain of learn- 
ing to doctors, an ocean of all things excellent 
to all who are within the ship and bounds of 
the catholic Church. So that old men and 
young men, maidens and boys, the scribe and 
the unlearned, the judge and the advocate, the 
priest and the people, are full of the spirit, if 
they belong to God. Moses's wish is fulfilled, 
and all the Lord's people are prophets in some 
sense or other, 

A man that hath tasted of God's spirit can 
instantly discern the madness that is in rage, 
the folly and the disease that is in envy, the 
anguish and tediousness that is in lust, the dis- 
honor that is in breaking our faith and telling 
a He ; and understands things truly as they 



148 THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 

are ; that is, that charity is the greatest noble- 
ness in the world ; that religion hath in it the 
greatest pleasures ; that temperance is the best 
security of health ; that humility is the surest 
way to honor. And all these relishes are noth- 
ing but antepasts of heaven, where the quintes- 
sence of all these pleasures shall be swallowed 
forever ; where the chaste shall follow the 
Lamb, and the virgins sing there where the 
mother of Jesus shall reign ; and the zealous 
converters of souls, and the laborers in God's 
vineyard, shall worship eternally; where St. 
Peter and St. Paul do wear their crowns of 
righteousness ; and the patient persons shall be 
rewarded with Job, and the meek persons with 
Christ and Moses, and all with God. The very 
expectation of which proceeded from a hope 
begotten in us by the spirit of manifestation, 
and bred up and strengthened by the spirit of 
obsignation, is so delicious an entertainment of 
all our reasonable appetites, that a spiritual 
man can no more be removed or enticed from 
the love of God and of religion than the moon 
from her orb, or a mother from loving the son 
of her joys and of her sorrows. 

I have read of a spiritual person who saw 
heaven but in a dream, but such as made great 
impression upon him, and was represented with 
vigorous and pertinacious phantasms not easily 
disbanding; and when he awaked he knew not 



THE SPIRIT OF GRACE. 149 

his cell, he remembered not him that slept in 
the same dorture, nor could tell how night and 
day were distinguished, nor could discern oil 
from wine ; but called out for his vision again : 
u Redde mihi eampos meos floridos, columnam 
auream, comitem Ilieronymum, assistentes ange- 
los " ; Give me my fields again, my most deli- 
cious fields, my pillar of a glorious light, my 
companion St. Jerome, my assistant angels. 
And this lasted till he was told of his duty, 
and matter of obedience, and the fear of a 
sin had disencharmed him, and caused him to 
take care lest he lose the substance out of 
greediness to possess the shadow. 

Prayer is one of the noblest exercises of the 
Christian religion ; or rather it is that duty in 
which all graces are concentrated. Prayer is 
charity, it is faith, it is a conformity to God's 
will, a desiring according to the desires of 
heaven, an imitation of Christ's intercession, 
and prayer must suppose all holiness, or else 
it is nothing: and therefore all that in which 
men need God's spirit, all that is in order to 
prayer. Baptism is but a prayer, and the holy 
sacrament of the Lord's supper is but a prayer ; 
a prayer of sacrifice representative, and a 
prayer of oblation, and a prayer of intercession, 
and a prayer of thanksgiving. And obedience 
is a prayer, and begs and procures blessings. 



150 THE GLORY OF GOD. 



THE DECLINE OF CHRISTENDOM. 

TT is a sad calamity that is fallen upon all the 
■*■ Seven Churches of Asia, (to whom the spirit 
of God wrote seven epistles by Saint John,) 
and almost all the churches of Africa, where 
Christ was worshipped, and now Mahomet is 
thrust in substitution, and the people are ser- 
vants, and the religion is extinguished; or where 
it remains it shines like the moon in an eclipse, 
or like the least spark of the Pleiades, seen but 
seldom, and that rather shining like a glow- 
worm than a taper enkindled with a beam of 
the sun of righteousness. 



THE GLORY OF GOD. 

/^ OD is the eternal fountain of honor and the 
" spring of glory ; in him it dwells essen- 
tially, from him it derives originally ; and when 
an action is glorious, or a man is honorable, it 
is because the action is pleasing to God, in the 
relation of obedience or imitation, and because 
the man is honored by God, and by God's vice- 
nt. And therefore God cannot be dishon- 
1, because all honor comes from himself; 
he cannot but be glorified, because to be him- 



TEE GLORY OF GOD. 151 

self is to be infinitely glorious. And yet he is 
pleased to say that our sins dishonor him, and 
our obedience does glorify him. But as the 
sun, the great eye of the world, prying into the 
recesses of rocks and the hollowness of valleys, 
receives species or visible forms from these 
objects, but he beholds them only by that light 
which proceeds from himself: so does God, 
who is the light of that eye ; he receives re- 
flexes and returns from us, and these he calls 
glorifications of himself, but they are such 
which are made so by his own gracious ac- 
ceptation. For God cannot be glorified by 
anything but by himself, and by his own in- 
struments, which he makes as mirrors to reflect 
his own excellency ; that, by seeing the glory 
of such emanations, he may rejoice in his own 
works, because they are images of his infinity. 
Thus when he made the beauteous frame of 
heaven and earth, he rejoiced in it and glori- 
fied himself ; because it was the glass in which 
he beheld his wisdom and almighty power. 
And when God destroyed the old world, in 
that also he glorified himself; for in those 
waters he saw the image of his justice, — they 
were the looking-glass for that attribute. 

All the actions of a holy life do constitute 
die mass and body of all those instruments 
whereby God is pleased to glorify himself. For 
if God is glorified in the sun and moon, in the 



152 DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. 

rare fabric of the honey-combs, in the discipline 
of bees, in the economy of pismires, in the little 
houses of birds, in the curiosity of an eye, God 
being pleased to delight in those little images 
and reflexes of himself from those pretty mir- 
rors,, which, like a crevice in a wall, through a 
narrow perspective transmit the species of a 
vast excellency ; much rather shall God be 
pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our 
obedience, in the emissions of our will and 
understanding ; these being rational and apt 
instruments to express him, far better than 
the natural, as being nearer communications 
of himself. 



DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. 

C INCE repentance is a duty of so great and 
^ giant-like bulk, let no man crowd it up into 
so narrow room as that it be strangled in its 
birth for want of time, and air to breathe in. 
Let it not be put off to that time when a man 
hath scarce time enough to reckon all those 
particular duties which make up the integrity 
of its constitution. Will any man hunt the 
wild boar in his garden, or bait a bull in his 
closet ? Will a woman wrap her child in her 
handkerchief, or a father send his son to school 



DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. 153 

when he is fifty years old ? These are indecen- 
cies of providence, and the instrument contra- 
dicts the end : and this is our case. There is 
no room for the repentance, no time to act all 
its essential parts. 

When God requires nothing of us but to live 
soberly, justly, and godly, — which very things 
of themselves to man are a very great felicity, 
and necessary to his present well-being, — 
shall we think this to be a load, and an insuf- 
ferable burden ; and that heaven is so little a 
purchase at that price, that God in mere justice 
will take a death-bed sigh or groan, and a few 
unprofitable tears and promises, in exchange 
for all our duty ? Strange it should be so ; but 
stranger that any man should rely upon such 
a vanity, w T hen from God's word he hath noth- 
ing to warrant such a confidence. But these 
men do like the tyrant Dionysius, who stole 
from Apollo his golden cloak and gave him a 
cloak of Arcadian homespun, saying that this 
was lighter in summer and warmer in winter. 
These men sacrilegiously rob God of the service 
of all their golden days, and serve him in their 
hoary head, in their furs and grave-clothes. 



154 DECEITFULNESS OF TEE HEART. 



DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART. 

jl/TAN is helpless and vain ; of a condition so 
^*- exposed to calamity, that a raisin is able to 
kill him ; any trooper out of the Egyptian 
army, a fly, can do it, when it goes on God's 
errand ; the most contemptible accident can 
destroy him, the smallest chance affright him, 
every future contingency, when but considered 
as possible, can amaze him ; and he is encom- 
passed with potent and malicious enemies, 
subtle and implacable. 

The heart is deceitful in its strength ; and 
when we have the growth of a man, we have 
the weaknesses of a child. Nay, more yet, and 
it is a sad consideration, the more we are in 
age, the weaker in our courage. It appears in 
the heats and forwardnesses of new converts, 
which are like to the great emissions of light- 
ning, or like huge fires which flame and burn 
without measure, even all that they can ; till 
from flames they descend to still fires, from 
thence to smoke, from smoke to embers, and 
from thence to ashes, — cold and pale, like 
ghosts, or the fantastic images of death. And 
the Primitive Church were zealous in their re- 
ligion up to the degree of cherubims, and would 
run as greedily to the sword of the hangman, 
to die for the cause of God, as we do now 



DECEITFULNESS OF TEE HEART. 155 

to the greatest joy and entertainment of a 
Christian spirit, — even to the receiving of the 
holy sacrament. A man would think it rea- 
sonable that the first infancy of Christianity 
should, according to the nature of first begin- 
nings, have been remiss, gentle, and inactive ; 
and that, according as the object or evidence 
of faith grew, which in every age hath a great 
degree of argument superadded to its confir- 
mation, so should the habit also and the grace ; 
the longer it lasts, and the more objections it 
runs through, it still should show a brighter 
and more certain light to discover the divinity 
of its principle ; and that, after the more ex- 
amples, and new accidents and strangenesses 
of Providence, and daily experience, and the 
multitude of miracles, still the Christian should 
grow more certain in his faith, more refreshed 
in his hope, and warm in his charity ; the very 
nature of these graces increasing and swelling 
upon the very nourishment of experience, and 
the multiplication of their own acts. And yet, 
because the heart of man is false, it suffers the 
fires of the altar to go out, and the flames 
lessen by the multitude of fuel. But, indeed, 
it is because we put on strange fire, and put 
out the fire upon our hearths by letting in a 
glaring sunbeam, the fire of lust, or the heats 
of an angry spirit, to quench the fire of God, 
and suppress the sweet cloud of incense. 



156 DECE1TFULNESS OF THE HEART. 

There is no greater argument in the world of 
our spiritual weakness, and the falseness of our 
hearts in the matters of religion, than the back- 
wardness which most men have always, and all 
men have sometimes, to say their prayers ; so 
weary of their length, so glad when they are 
done, so witty to excuse and frustrate an op- 
portunity : and yet there is no manner of 
trouble in the duty, no weariness of bones, no 
violent labors ; nothing but begging a blessing, 
and receiving it ; nothing but doing ourselves 
the greatest honor of speaking to the greatest 
person, and greatest king of the world : and 
that we should be unwilling to do this, so un- 
able to continue in it, so backward to return to 
it, so without gust and relish in the doing it, 
can have no visible reason in the nature of the 
thing but something within us, a strange sick- 
ness in the heart, a spiritual nauseating or 
loathing of manna, something that hath no 
name ; but we are sure that it comes from a 
weak, a faint and false heart. 

Epictetus tells us of a gentleman returning 
from banishment, who, in his journey towards 
home, called at his house, told a sad story of an 
imprudent life, the greatest part of which being 
now spent, lie was resolved for the future to 
live philosophically and entertain no business, 
to be candidate for no employment, not to go 
to the court, not to salute Cajsar with ambitious 



DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART. 157 

attendances, but to study, and worship the 
gods, and die willingly when nature or neces- 
sity called him. It may be, this man believed 
himself; but Epictetus did not. And he had 
reason : letters from Caesar met him at the 
doors, and invited him to court ; and he forgot 
all his promises which were warm upon his 
lips, and grew pompous, secular, and ambi- 
tious, and gave the gods thanks for his prefer- 
ment. Thus many men leave the world when 
their fortune hath left them ; and they are 
severe and philosophical, and retired forever, if 
forever it be impossible to return. But let a 
prosperous sunshine warm and refresh their 
sadnesses, and make it but possible to break 
their purposes, and there needs no more temp- 
tation ; their own false heart is enough ; they 
are like Ephraim in the day of battle, starting 
aside like a broken bow. 

The heart is false, deceiving and deceived, 
in its intentions and designs. A man hears the 
precepts of God enjoining us to give alms of 
all we possess ; he readily obeys with much 
cheerfulness and alacrity, and his charity, like 
a fair-spreading tree, looks beauteously. But 
there is a canker at the heart ; the man blows 
a trumpet to call the poor together, and hopes 
the neighborhood will take notice of his bounty. 
Nay, he gives alms privately, and charges no 
man to speak of it, and yet hopes by some 



158 DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART. 

accident or other to be praised both for his 
charity and humility. And if, by chance, the 
fame of his alms come abroad, it is but his duty 
to " let his light so shine before men" that 
God may be glorified. 

There is wrought upon the spirits of many 
men great impressions by education, by a mod- 
est and temperate nature, by human laws and 
the customs and severities of sober persons, 
and the fears of religion, and the awfulness of 
a reverend man, and the several arguments 
and endearments of virtue : and it is not in the 
nature of some men to do an act in despite of 
reason, and religion, and arguments, and rever- 
ence, and modesty, and fear ; but men are 
forced from their sin by the violence of the 
grace of God, when they hear it speak. But 
so a Roman gentleman kept off a whole band 
of soldiers who were sent to murder him, and 
his eloquence was stronger than their anger 
and design : but, suddenly, a rude trooper 
rushed upon him, who neither had nor would 
hear him speak ; and he thrust his spear into 
that throat whose music had charmed all his 
fellows into peace and gentleness. So do we. 
The grace of God is armor and defence enough 
against the most violent incursion of the spirits 
and the works of darkness ; but then we must 
hear its excellent charms, and consider its 
reasons, and remember its precepts, and dwell 



DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART. 159 

with its discourses. But this the heart of man 
^ves not. 

Theocritus tells of a fisherman that dreamed 
he had taken a fish of gold, upon which being 
overjoyed, he made a vow that he never would 
fish more ; but when he waked, he soon de- 
clared his vow to be null, because he found his 
golden fish was escaped away through the holes 
of his eyes when he first opened them. Just 
so we do in the purposes of religion ; some- 
times, in a good mood, we seem to see heaven 
opened, and all the streets of the heavenly 
Jerusalem paved with gold and precious stones, 
and we are ravished with spiritual apprehen- 
sions, and resolve never to return to the low 
affections of the world and the impure adher- 
ences of sin. But when this flash of lightning 
is gone, and we converse again with the incli- 
nations and habitual desires of our false hearts, 
those other desires and fine considerations dis- 
band, and the resolutions, taken in that pious 
fit, melt into indifference and old customs. 

The effect of all is this, that we are ignorant 
of the things of God. We make religion to be 
the work of a few hours in the whole year ; we 
are without fancy or affection to the severities 
of holy living ; we reduce religion to the be- 
lieving of a few articles, and doing nothing that 
is considerable ; we pray seldom, and then but 
very coldly and indifferently ; we communicate 



160 BECElTFCLXESS OF THE HEART. 

not so often as the sun salutes both the tropics; 
we profess Christ, but dare not die for him; 
we are factious for a religion, and will not live 
according to its precepts ; we call ourselves 
Christians, and love to be ignorant of many of 
the laws of Christ, lest our knowledge should 
force us into shame, or into the troubles of a 
holy life. All the mischiefs that you can sup- 
pose to happen to a furious, inconsiderate per- 
son, running after the wildfires of the night, 
over rivers and rocks and precipices, without 
sun or star, or angel or man, to guide him ; all 
that, and ten thousand times worse, may you 
suppose to be the certain lot of him who gives 
himself up to the conduct of a passionate, blind 
heart, whom no tire can warm, and no sun can 
enlighten ; who hates light, and loves to dwell 
in the regions of darkness. 

The heart of man is strangely proud. If 
men commend us, we think we have reason 
to distinguish ourselves from others, since the 
voice of discerning men hath already made the 
separation. If men do not commend us, we 
think they are stupid and understand us not . 
or envious, and hold their tongues in spite. If 
we are praised by many, then " Vox poj)idi< 
Dei," Fame is the voice of God. If we be 
praised but by few, then, 6% Satis unus, I 
nuUus" ; we cry. These are wise, and one v. 
man is worth a whole herd of the people. But 



DECEITFULNESS OF THE HEART. 161 

if we be praised by none at all, we resolve to 
be even with all the world, and speak well of 
nobody, and think well only of ourselves. And 
then we have such beggarly arts, such tricks, 
to cheat for praise. We inquire after our faults 
and failings, only to be told we have none, but 
did excellently ; and then we are pleased : we 
rail upon our actions, only to be chidden for so 
doing ; and then he is our friend who chides us 
into a good opinion of ourselves, which how- 
ever all the world cannot make us part with. 
Nay, humility itself makes us proud ; so false, 
so base is the heart of man. For humility is 
so noble a virtue that even pride itself puts on 
its upper garment ; and we do like those who 
cannot endure to look upon an ugly or a de- 
formed person, and yet will give a great price 
for a picture extremely like him. Humility is 
despised in substance, but courted and admired 
in effigy. And jEsop's picture was sold for 
two talents, when himself was made a slave at 
the price of two philippics. And because hu- 
mility makes a man to be honored, therefore 
we imitate all its garbs and postures, its civili- 
ties and silence, its modesties and condescen- 
sions. And, to prove that we are extremely 
proud in the midst of all this pageantry, we 
should be extremely angry at any man that 
should say we are proud ; and that is a sure 
sign we are so. And in the midst of all our 
11 



162 FAITH AND PATIENCE. 

arts to seem humble, we use devices to bring 
ourselves into talk ; we thrust ourselves into 
company, we listen at doors, and, like the great 
beards in Rome that pretended philosophy and 
strict life, " we walk by the obelisk," and medi- 
tate in piazzas, that they that meet us may 
talk of us, and they that follow may cry out, 
" Behold ! there goes an excellent man ! He is 
very prudent, or very learned, or a charitable 
person, or a good housekeeper, or at least very 
humble." 

When the heart of man is bound up by the 
grace of God, and tied in golden bands, and 
watched by angels, tended by those nurse- 
keepers of the soul, it is not easy for a man to 
wander ; and the evil of his heart is but like 
the ferity and wildness of lions' whelps. But 
when once we have broken the hedge, and got 
into the strengths of youth, and the licentious- 
ness of an ungoverned age, it is wonderful to 
observe what a great inundation of mischief in 
a very short time will overflow all the banks of 
reason and religion. 



s 



FAITH AND PATIENCE. 

O long as the world lived by sense and dis- 
courses of natural reason, as they were 



FAITH AND PATIENCE. 163 

abated with human infirmities and not at all 
heightened by the spirit and divine revelations, 
so long men took their accounts of good and 
bad by their being prosperous or unfortunate ; 
and amongst the basest and most ignorant of 
men that only was accounted honest which 
was profitable, and he only wise that was 
rich, and those men beloved of God who 
received from him all that might satisfy their 
lust, their ambition, or their revenge. 

But because God sent wise men into the 
world, and they were treated rudely by the 
world, and exercised with evil accidents, and 
this seemed so great a discouragement to virtue, 
that even these wise men were more troubled 
to reconcile virtue and misery than to reconcile 
their affections to the suffering ; God was pleased 
to enlighten their reason with a little beam of 
faith, or else heightened their reason by wiser 
principles than those of vulgar understandings, 
and taught them in the clear glass of faith, or 
the dim perspective of philosophy, to look be- 
yond the cloud, and there to spy that there 
stood glories behind their curtain, to which they 
could not come but by passing through the 
cloud, and being wet with the dew of heaven 
and the waters of affliction. And according as 
the world grew more enlightened by faith, so it 
grew more dark with mourning and sorrows, 
God sometimes sent a light of fire, and a pillar 



164 FAITH AND PATIENCE. 

of a cloud, and the brightness of an angel, and 
the lustre of a star, and the sacrament of a 
rainbow, to guide his people through their por- 
tion of sorrows, and to lead them through 
troubles to rest. But as the sun of righteous- 
ness approached towards the chambers of the 
east, and sent the harbingers of light peeping 
through the curtains of the night, and leading 
on the day of faith and brightest revelation ; 
so God sent degrees of trouble upon wise and 
good men, that now in the same degree in the 
which the world " lives by faith " and not by- 
sense, in the same degree they might be able 
to live in virtue even while she lived in trouble, 
and not reject so great a beauty because she 
goes in mourning, and hath a black cloud of 
cypress drawn before her face. Literally thus: 
God first entertained their services, and allured 
and prompted on the infirmities of the infant 
world by temporal prosperity ; but by degrees 
changed his method, and as men grew stronger 
in the knowledge of God and the expectations 
of heaven, so they grew weaker in their for- 
tunes, more afflicted in their bodies, more 
abated in their expectations, more subject to 
their enemies, and were to " endure the con- 
tradiction of sinners," and the immission of the 
sharpnesses of providence and divine economy. 



THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST 165 



THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST. 

TESUS entered into the world with all the 
** circumstances of poverty. He had a star 
to illustrate his birth ; but a stable for his bed- 
chamber, and a manger for his cradle. The 
angels sang hymns when he was born ; but he 
was cold and cried, uneasy and unprovided. 
He lived long in the trade of a carpenter ; he 
by whom God made the world had, in his 
first years, the business of a mean and ignoble 
trade. He did good wherever he went; and 
almost wherever he went was abused. He 
deserved heaven for his obedience, but found 
a cross in his way thither: and if ever any man 
had reason to expect fair usages from God, and 
to be dandled in the lap of ease, softness, and a 
prosperous fortune, he it was only that could 
deserve that, or anything that can be good. 
But after he had chosen to live a life of vir- 
tue, of poverty and labor, he entered into a 
state of death. 

All that Christ came for was, or was mingled 
with, sufferings : for all those little joys which 
God sent, either to recreate his person, or to 
illustrate his office, were abated or attended 
with afflictions ; God being more careful to 
establish in him the covenant of sufferings 
than to refresh his sorrows. Presently after 



166 THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST. 

the angels had finished their hallelujahs, he 
was forced to fly to save his life ; and the air 
became full of shrieks of the desolate mothers 
of Bethlehem for their dying babes. God had 
no sooner made him illustrious with a voice 
from heaven, and the descent of the Holy 
Ghost upon him in the waters of baptism, but 
he was delivered over to be tempted and as- 
saulted by the devil in the wilderness. His 
transfiguration was a bright ray of glory ; but 
then also he entered into a cloud, and was told 
a sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem. 
And upon Palm-Sunday, when he rode tri- 
umphantly into Jerusalem, and was adorned 
with the acclamations of a king and a God, he 
wet the palms with his tears, sweeter than the 
drops of manna or the little pearls of heaven 
that descended upon Mount Hermon ; weeping 
in the midst of this triumph over obstinate, 
perishing, and malicious Jerusalem. For this 
Jesus was like the rainbow which God set in 
the clouds as a sacrament to confirm a promise 
and establish a grace ; he was half made of the 
glories of the light, and half of the moisture of 
a cloud ; in his best days he was but half tri- 
umph and half sorrow : he was sent to tell of 
his Father's mercies, and that God intended 
to spare us ; but appeared not but in the com- 
pany or in the retinue of a shower, and of foul 
weather. 



THE HUMILIATION OF CHRIST. 167 

But I need not tell that Jesus, beloved of 
God, was a suffering person. That which con- 
cerns this question most, is, that he made for 
us a covenant of sufferings ; his doctrines were 
such as expressly and by consequence enjoin and 
suppose sufferings and a state of affliction : his 
very promises were sufferings ; his beatitudes 
were sufferings; his rewards, and his argu- 
ments to invite men to follow him, were only 
taken from sufferings in this life, and the re- 
ward of sufferings hereafter. We must follow 
him that was crowned with thorns and sor- 
rows, — him that was drenched in Cedron, 
nailed upon the cross, that deserved all good 
and suffered all evil ; that is the sum of the 
Christian religion, as it distinguishes from all 
the religions of the world. So that if we will 
serve the king of sufferings, whose crown was 
of thorns, whose sceptre was a reed of scorn, 
whose imperial robe was a scarlet of mockery, 
whose throne was the cross, we must serve 
him in sufferings, in poverty of spirit, in humil- 
ity and mortification. And for our reward we 
shall have persecution, and all its blessed con- 
sequents. "Atque hoe est esse Christianum" 

For as the gospel was founded in sufferings, 
we shall also see it grow in persecutions : and 
as Christ's blood did cement the corner-stones 
and the first foundations, so the blood and 
sweat, the groans and sighings, the afflictions 



168 TRIUMPHS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and mortifications of saints and martyrs did 
make the superstructures, and must at last 
finish the building. 



TRIUMPHS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

1VTOW began to work the greatest glory of 
-*^ the divine providence : here was the case 
of Christianity at stake. The world was rich 
and prosperous, learned and fall of wise men ; 
the gospel was preached with poverty and 
persecution, in simplicity of discourse, and in 
demonstration of the spirit. God was on one 
side, and the devil on the other ; they each 
of them dressed up their city ; Babylon upon 
earth, Jerusalem from above. The devil's city 
was fall of pleasure, triumphs, victories, and 
cruelty ; good news, and great wealth ; con- 
quest over kings, and making nations tribu- 
tary. They " bound kings in chains, and the 
nobles with links of iron ; and the inheritance 
of the earth was theirs." The Romans were 
lords over the greatest part of the world ; and 
God permitted to the devil the firmament and 
increase, the wars and the success of that people 
giving to him an entire power of disposing the 
great change of the world so as might best 



TRIUMPHS OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 

increase their greatness and power : and he 
therefore did it because all the power of the 
Roman greatness was a professed enemy to 
Christianity. And, on the other side, God 
was to build up Jerusalem, and the kingdom 
of the gospel; and he chose to build it of 
hewn stone, cut and broken. The Apostles 
he chose for preachers, and they had no learn- 
ing; women and mean people were the first 
disciples, and they had no power. The devil 
was to lose his kingdom, he wanted no malice ; 
and therefore he stirred up, and, as well as he 
could, he made active, all the power of Rome, 
and all the learning of the Greeks, and all the 
malice of barbarous people, and all the preju- 
dice and the obstinacy of the Jews, against this 
doctrine and institution, which preached, and 
promised, and brought persecution along with 
it. On the one side there was " scandalum cru- 
m," on the other, "patientia sanctorum " : and 
what was the event ? They that had overcome 
the world could not strangle Christianity. But 
so have I seen the sun with a little ray of distant 
light challenge all the power of darkness, and, 
without violence and noise climbing up the hill, 
hath made night so to retire that its memory 
was lost in the joys and sprightfulness of the 
morning. And Christianity, without violence 
or armies, without resistance and self-preser- 
vation, without strength or human eloquence, 



170 TRIUMPHS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

without challenging of privileges or fighting 
against tyranny, without alteration of govern- 
ment and scandal of princes, with its humility 
and meekness, with toleration and patience, 
with obedience and charity, with praying and 
dying, did insensibly turn the world into Chris- 
tian, and persecution into victory. 

Presently it came to pass that men were no 
longer ashamed of the cross, but it was worn 
upon breasts, printed in the air, drawn upon 
foreheads, carried upon banners, put upon 
crowns imperial. Presently it came to pass 
that the religion of the despised Jesus did 
infinitely prevail ; a religion that taught men 
to be meek and humble, apt to receive injuries, 
but unapt to do any ; a religion that gave 
countenance to the poor and pitiful, in a time 
when riches were adored, and ambition and 
pleasure had possessed the heart of all man- 
kind ; a religion that would change the face of 
things and the hearts of men, and break vile 
habits into gentleness and counsel. That such 
a religion, in such a time, by the sermons and 
conduct of fishermen, men of mean breeding 
and illiberal arts, should so speedily triumph 
over the philosophy of the world, and the argu- 
ments of the subtle, and the sermons of the 
eloquent, the power of princes and the inter- 
ests of States, the inclinations of nature and 
the blindness of zeal, the force of custom and 



TRIUMPHS OF CHRISTIANITY. 171 

the solicitation of passions, the pleasures of sin 
and the busy arts of the devil ; that is, against 
wit and power, superstition and wilfulness, 
fame and money, nature and empire, which are 
all the causes in this world that can make a 
thing impossible ; — this, this is to be ascribed 
to the power of God, and is the great demon- 
stration of the resurrection of Jesus. Every- 
thing was an argument for it, and improved it ; 
no objection could hinder it, no enemies destroy 
it ; whatsoever was for them, it made the relig- 
ion to increase ; whatsoever was against them, 
made it to increase ; sunshine and storms, fair 
weather or foul, it was all one as to the event 
of things : for they were instruments in the 
hands of God, who could make what himself 
should choose to be the product of any cause ; 
so that if the Christians had peace, they went 
abroad and brought in converts ; if they had 
no peace, but persecution, the converts came 
in to them. In prosperity they allured and 
enticed the world by the beauty of holiness ; in 
affliction and trouble they amazed all men with 
the splendor of their innocence and the glo- 
ries of their patience ; and quickly it was that 
the worla 1 became disciple to the glorious Naza- 
rene, and men could no longer doubt of the 
resurrection of Jesus, when it became so de- 
monstrated by the certainty of them that saw 
it, and the courage of them that died for it, 



172 AFFLICTIONS OF THE CHURCH. 

and the multitude of them that believed it; 
who by their sermons and their actions, by 
their public offices and discourses, by festivals 
and eucharists, by arguments of experience 
and sense, by reason and religion, by persuad- 
ing rational men and establishing believing 
Christians, by their living in the obedience of 
Jesus and dying for the testimony of Jesus, 
have greatly advanced his kingdom, and his 
power, and his glory, into which he entered 
his resurrection from the dead. 



AFFLICTIONS OF THE CHURCH. 

TF under a head crowned with thorns, we 
■*■ bring to God members circled with roses, 
and softness, and delicacy, triumphant mem- 
bers in the militant Church, God will reject us ; 
he will not know us who are so unlike our 
elder brother. For we are members of the 
Lamb, not of the lion ; and of Christ's suffer- 
ing part, not of the triumphant part : and for 
three hundred years together the Church lived 
upon blood, and was nourished with blood, — the 
blood of her own children. Thirty-three bish- 
ops of Rome in immediate succession were put 
to violent and unnatural deaths ; and so were 
all the churches of the East and West built. 



AFFLICTIONS OF THE CHURCH, 173 

The cause of Christ and of religion was ad- 
vanced by the sword, but it was the sword of 
the persecutors, not of resisters or warriors. 
They were all baptized into the death of 
Christ ; their very profession and institution 
is to live like him, and, when he requires it, 
to die for him ; that is the very formality, the 
life and essence, of Christianity. This, I say, 
lasted for three hundred years, that the pray- 
ers, and the backs, and the necks of Christians 
fought against the rods and axes of the perse- 
cutors, and prevailed, till the country, and the 
cities, and the court itself, was filled with 
Christians. And by this time the army of 
martyrs was vast and numerous, and the num- 
ber, of sufferers blunted the hangman's sword. 
For Christ had triumphed over the princes and 
powers of the world, before he would admit 
them to serve him ; he first felt their malice, 
before he would make use of their defence ; to 
show, that it was not his necessity that required 
it, but his grace that admitted kings and queens 
to be nurses of the Church. 

Christ also promised that " all things should 
work together for the best to his servants," 
that is, he would " out of the eater bring meat, 
and out of the strong issue sweetness," and 
crowns and sceptres should spring from crosses, 
and that the cross itself should stand upon the 
globes and sceptres of princes ; but he never 



174 THE RIGHTEOUS OPPRESSED. 

promised to his servants that they should pur- 
sue kings and destroy armies, that they should 
reign over nations, and promote the cause of 
Jesus Christ by breaking his commandment. 
" The shield of faith, and the sword of the 
spirit, the armor of righteousness, and the 
weapons of spiritual warfare " ; these are they 
by which Christianity swelled from a small 
company, and a less reputation, to possess the 
chairs of doctors, and the thrones of princes, 
and the hearts of all men. 



THE RIGHTEOUS OPPRESSED. 

TF prosperity were the voice of God to ap- 
■*■ prove an action, then no man were vicious 
but he that is punished, and nothing were 
rebellion but that which cannot be easily sup- 
pressed ; and no man were a pirate but he that 
robs with a little vessel ; and no man could be 
a tyrant but that he is no prince ; and no man 
an unjust invader of his neighbor's rights but 
he that is beaten and overthrown. Then the 
crime grows big and loud, then it calls to 
heaven for vengeance, when it hath been long 
a growing, when it hath thriven upder the 
devil's manainno;; when God hath long suffered 
it, and with patience, in vain expecting the 



THE RIGHTEOUS OPPRESSED. 175 

repentance of a sinner. He that " treasures 
up wrath against the day of wrath," that man 
hath been a prosperous, that is, an unpunished 
and a thriving sinner: but then it is the sin 
that thrives, not the man : and that is the mis- 
take upon this whole question ; for the sin can- 
not thrive, unless the man goes on without ap- 
parent punishment and restraint. And all that 
the man gets by it is, that by a continual course 
of sin he is prepared for an intolerable ruin. 

The spirit of God bids us look upon the end 
of these men ; not the way they walk, or the 
instrument of that pompous death. When 
Epaminondas was asked which of the three 
was happiest, himself, Chabrias, or Iphicrates, 
he bid the man stay till they were all dead; 
for till then that question could not be an- 
swered. He that had seen the Vandals besiege 
the city of Hippo, and had known the barbar- 
ousness of that unchristened people, and had 
observed that St. Austin with all his prayers 
and vows could not obtain peace in his own 
days, not so much as a reprieve for the perse- 
cution, and then had observed St. Austin die 
with grief that very night, would have per- 
ceived his calamity more visible than the re- 
ward of his piety and holy religion. When 
Lewis, surnamed Pius, went his voyage to 
Palestine upon a holy end, and for the glory 
of God, to fight against the Saracens and Turks 



176 THE RIGHTEOUS OPPRESSED. 

and Mamelukes, the world did promise to 
themselves that a good cause should thrive in 
the hands of so holy a man ; but the event 
was far otherwise : his brother Robert was 
killed, and his army destroyed, and himself 
taken prisoner, and the money which by his 
mother was sent for his redemption was cast 
away in a storm, and he was exchanged for the 
last town the Christians had in Egypt, and 
brought home the cross of Christ upon his 
shoulder in a real pressure and participation of 
his Master's sufferings. When Charles the 
Fifth went to Algiers to suppress pirates and 
unchristened villains, the cause was more con- 
fident than the event was prosperous ; and 
when he was almost ruined in a prodigious 
storm, he told the minutes of the clock, ex- 
pecting that at midnight, when religious per- 
sons rose to matins, he should be eased by the 
benefit of their prayers. But the providence 
of God trod upon those waters, and left no foot- 
steps for discovery. His navy was beat in 
pieces, and his design ended in dishonor, and 
his life almost lost by the bargain. Was ever 
cause more baffled than the Christian cause by 
the Turks in all Asia and Africa, and some 
parts of Europe, if to be persecuted and af- 
flicted be reckoned a calamity ? What prince 
was ever more unfortunate than Henry the 
Sixth of England ? and yet that age saw none 



THE RIGHTEOUS OPPRESSED. 177 

more pious and devout. And the title of the 
house of Lancaster was advanced against the 
right of York for three descents. But what 
was the end of these things ? The persecuted 
-men were made saints, and their memories are 
preserved in honor, and their souls shall reign 
forever. And some good men were engaged 
in a wrong cause, and the good cause was 
sometimes managed by evil men ; till that the 
suppressed cause was lifted up by God in the 
hands of a young and prosperous prince, and 
at last both interests were satisfied in the con- 
junction of two roses, which was brought to 
issue by a wonderful chain of causes managed 
by the divine providence. And there is no 
age, no history, no state, no great change in 
the world, but hath ministered an example of 
an afflicted truth, and a prevailing sin : for I 
will never more call that sinner prosperous, 
who, after he hath been permitted to finish his 
business, shall die and perish miserably ; for at 
the same rate we may envy the happiness of a 
poor fisherman, who, while his nets were dry- 
ing, slept upon the rock, and dreamt that he 
was made a king ; on a sudden starts up, and 
leaping for joy, falls down from the rock, and 
in the place of his imaginary felicities loses his 
little portion of pleasure and innocent solaces 
he had from the sound sleep and little cares of 
his humble cottage. 
12 



178 REAL AND APPARENT HAPPINESS. 



REAL AND APPARENT HAPPINESS. 

TF we should look under the skirt of the pros- 
•*■ perous and prevailing tyrant, we should find 
even in the days of his joys such allays and 
abatements of his pleasure as may serve to 
represent him presently miserable, besides his 
final infelicities. For I have seen a young and 
healthful person warm and ruddy under a poor 
and thin garment, when at the same time an 
old rich person hath been cold and paralytic 
under a load of sables and the skins of foxes. 
It is the body that makes the clothes warm, 
not the clothes the body ; and the spirit of a 
man makes felicity and content, not any spoils 
of a rich fortune wrapt about a sickly and an 
uneasy soul. Apollodorus was a traitor and a 
tyrant, and the world wondered to see a bad 
man have so good a fortune ; but knew not that 
he nourished scorpions in his breast, and that 
his liver and his heart were eaten up with spec- 
tres and images of death. His thoughts were 
full of interruptions, his dreams of illusions ; his 
fancy was abused with real troubles and fan- 
tastic images, imagining that he saw the Scyth- 
ians flaying him alive, his daughters like 
pillars of fire 1 dancing round about a caldron in 
which himself was boiling, and that his heart 
accused itself to be the cause of all these evils. 



REAL AND APPARENT HAPPINESS, 179 

Does not he drink more sweetly that takes 
his beverage in an earthen vessel, than he that 
looks and searches into his golden chalices for 
fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden 
noise, and sleeps in armor, and trusts nobody, 
and does not trust God for his safety, but does 
greater wickedness only to escape awhile un- 
punished for his former crimes ? " Auro hibi- 
tur venerium." No man goes about to poison a 
poor man's pitcher, nor lays plots to forage his 
little garden made for the hospital of two bee- 
hives, and the feasting of a few Pythagorean 
herb-eaters. They that admire the happiness 
of a prosperous, prevailing tyrant, know not 
the felicities that dwell in innocent hearts, and 
poor cottages, and small fortunes. 

Can a man bind a thought with chains, or 
carry imaginations in the palm of his hand? 
Can the beauty of the peacock's train, or the 
ostrich plume, be delicious to the palate and 
the throat ? Does the hand intermeddle with 
the joys of the heart ? or darkness, that hides 
the naked, make him warm ? Does the body 
live, as does the spirit ? or can the body of 
Christ be like to common food ? Indeed the 
sun shines upon the good and bad ; and the 
vines give wine to the drunkard as well as to 
the sober man ; pirates have fair winds and a 
calm sea at the same time when the just and 
peaceful merchantman hath them. But al- 



180 MARTYRDOM. 

though the things of this world are common to 
good and bad, yet sacraments and spiritual joys, 
the food of the soul, and the blessing of Christ, 
are the peculiar right of saints. 



MARTYRDOM. 

HPHEY that suffer anything for Christ, and 
-*- are ready to die for him, let them do 
nothing against him. For certainly they think 
too highly of martyrdom, who believe it able to 
excuse all the evils of a wicked life. A man 
may give his body to be burned, and yet have 
no charity ; and he that dies without charity 
dies without God : " for God is love." And 
when those who fought in the days of the Mac- 
cabees for the defence of true religion, and 
were killed in those holy wars, yet, being dead, 
were found having about their necks pendants 
consecrated to idols of the Jamnenses ; it much 
allayed the hope which, by their dying in so 
good a cause, was entertained concerning their 
beatifical resurrection. He that overcomes his 
fear of death, does well ; but if he hath not also 
overcome his lust, or his anger, his baptism of 
blood will not wash him clean. Many things 
make a man willing to die in a good cause : 
public reputation, hope of reward, gallantry of 



MARTYRDOM. 181 

spirit, a confident resolution, and a masculine 
courage ; or a man may be vexed into a stub- 
born and unrelenting suffering. But nothing 
can make a man live well but the grace and 
the love of God. But those persons are infi- 
nitely condemned by their last act, who profess 
their religion to be worth dying for, and yet 
are so unworthy as not to live according to its 
institution. It were a rare felicity, if every 
good cause could be managed by good men 
only; but we have found that evil men have 
spoiled a good cause, but never that a good 
cause made those evil men good and holy. If 
the governor of Samaria had crucified Simon 
Magus for receiving Christian baptism, he had 
no more died a martyr than he lived a saint. 
For dying is not enough, and dying in a good 
cause is not enough ; but then only we receive 
the crown of martyrdom when our death is 
the seal of our life, and our life is a continual 
testimony of our duty, and both give testimony 
to the excellencies of the religion, and glorify 
the grace of God. If a man be gold, the fire 
purges him ; but it burns him if he be like 
stubble, cheap, light, and useless. For mar- 
tyrdom is the consummation of love. But then 
it must be supposed that this grace must have 
had its beginning, and its several stages and 
periods, and must have passed through labor to 
zeal, through all the regions of duty to the per- 



182 MARTYRDOM. • 

fections of sufferings. And therefore it is a sad 
thing to observe how some empty souls will 
please themselves with being of such a religion 
or such a cause, and, though they dishonor 
their religion, or weigh down the cause with 
the prejudice of sin, believe all is swallowed up 
by one honorable name, or the appellative of 
one virtue. If God had forbid nothing but 
heresy and treason, then to have been a loyal 
man, or of a good belief, had been enough: 
but he that forbade rebellion forbids all swear- 
ing and covetousness, rapine and oppression, 
lying and cruelty. And it is a sad thing to 
see a man not only to spend his time, and his 
wealth, and his money, and his friends upon his 
lust, but to spend his sufferings too : to let the 
canker-worm of a deadly sin devour his mar- 
tyrdom. He therefore that suffers in a good 
cause, let him be sure to walk worthy of that 
honor to which God hath called him ; let him 
first deny his sins, and then deny himself, and 
then he may take up his cross and follow 
Christ ; ever remembering that no man pleases 
God in his death who hath walked perversely 
in his life. 



THE PROGRESS OF SOULS. 183 



THE PKOGRESS OF SOULS. 

\ S the silk-worm eateth itself out of a seed 
^- to become a little worm ; and there feed- 
ing on the leaves of mulberries, it grows till its 
coat be off, and then works itself into a house 
of silk; then casting its pearly seeds for the 
young to breed, it leaveth its silk for man, and 
dieth all white and winged in the shape of a 
flying creature: so is the progress of souls. 
When they are regenerate by baptism, and 
have cast off their first stains and the skin 
of worldly vanities by feeding on the leaves 
of scriptures, and the fruits of the vine, and 
the joys of the sacrament, they encircle them- 
selves in the rich garments of holy and virtu- 
ous habits ; then by leaving their blood, which 
is the Church's seed, to raise up a new gen- 
eration to God, they leave a blessed memory 
and fair example, and are themselves turned 
into angels, whose felicity is to do the will of 
God, as their employment was in this world to 
suffer it. 



184 THE INEXPERIENCED CHRISTIAN. 



THE INEXPERIENCED CHRISTIAN. 

npHE righteous is safe ; but by intermedial 
-*- difficulties : and he is safe in the midst of 
his persecutions ; they may disturb his rest, and 
discompose his fancy, but they are like the 
fiery chariot to Elias ; he is encircled with fire, 
and rare circumstances, and strange usages, but 
is carried up to heaven in a robe of flames. 
And so was Noah safe when the flood came, 
and was the great type and instance too of the 
verification of this proposition ; he was put into 
a strange condition, perpetually wandering, 
shut up in a prison of wood, living upon faith, 
having never had the experience of being safe 
in floods. 

And so have I often seen young and unskil- 
ful persons sitting in a little boat, when every 
little wave sporting about the sides of the ves- 
sel, and every motion and dancing of the barge 
seemed a danger, and made them cling fast 
upon their fellows ; and yet all the while they 
were as safe as if they sat under a tree, while 
a gentle wind shaked the leaves into a refresh- 
ment and a cooling shade. And the unskilful, 
inexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever 
his vessel shakes, thinking it always a danger 
that the watery pavement is not stable and resi- 
dent like a rock ; and yet all his danger is in 



THE SORROWS OF THE GODLY, 185 

himself, none at all from without : for he is 
indeed moving upon the waters, but fastened 
to a rock. Faith is his foundation, and hope 
is his anchor, and death is his harbor, and 
Christ is his pilot, and heaven is his country ; 
and all the evils of poverty, or affronts of tri- 
bunals and evil judges, of fears and sadder ap- 
prehensions, are but like the loud wind blowing 
from the right point : they make a noise, and 
drive faster to the harbor. And if we do not 
leave the ship and leap into the sea ; quit the 
interests of religion, and run to the securities 
of the world ; cut our cables, and dissolve our 
hopes ; grow impatient, and hug a wave, and 
die in its embraces ; we are as safe at sea, safer 
in the storm which God ' sends us, than in a 
calm when we are befriended with the world. 



THE SORROWS OF THE GODLY. 

CO much as moments are exceeded by eter- 
^ nity, and the sighing of a man by the joys 
of an angel, and a salutary frown by the light 
of God's countenance, a few groans by the 
infinite and eternal hallelujahs ; so much are 
the sorrows of the godly to be undervalued in 
respect of what is deposited for them in the 
treasures of eternity. Their sorrows can die, 



186 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 

but so cannot their joys. And if the blessed 
martyrs and confessors were asked concerning 
their past sufferings and their present rest, and 
the joys of their certain expectation, you should 
hear them glory in nothing but in the mercies 
of God, and in the cross of the Lord Jesus. 
Every chain is a ray of light, and every prison 
is a palace, and every loss is the purchase of a 
kingdom, and every affront in the cause of God 
is an eternal honor, and every day of sorrow is 
a thousand years of comfort, multiplied with a 
never-ceasing numeration ; days without night, 
joys without sorrow, sanctity without sin, 
charity without stain, possession without fear, 
society without envying, communication of 
joys without lessening : and they shall dwell 
in a blessed country, where an enemy never 
entered, and from whence a friend never went 
away. 



THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 

T7ROM the beginning of time till now, all 
■*■ effluxes wjuoh have come from God have 
been nothing but emanations of his goodness 
clothed in variety of circumstances. He made 
man with no other design than that man should 
be happy, and by receiving derivations from 



TEE GOODNESS OF GOD. 187 

his fountain of mercy, might reflect glory to 
him. And therefore God making man for his 
own glory, made also a paradise for man's use ; 
and did him good, to invite him to do himself a 
greater. For God gave forth demonstrations 
of his power by instances of mercy, and he 
who might have made ten thousand worlds of 
wonder and prodigy, and created man with 
faculties able only to stare upon and admire 
those miracles of mightiness, did choose to 
instance his power in the effusions of mercy, 
that at the same instant he might represent 
himself desirable and adorable, in all the capac- 
ities of amiability ; viz : as excellent in himself, 
and profitable to us. For as the sun sends 
forth a benign and gentle influence on the seed 
of plants, that it may invite forth the active 
and plastic power from its recess and secrecy, 
that by rising into the tallness and dimensions 
of a tree it may still receive a greater and more 
refreshing influence from its foster-father, the 
prince of all the bodies of light ; and in all 
these emanations the sun itself receives no ad- 
vantage but the honor of doing benefits : so 
doth the Almighty Father of all the creatures ; 
he at first sends forth his blessings upon us, 
that we by using them aright should make 
ourselves capable of greater ; while the giving 
glory to God, and doing homage to him, are 
nothing for his advantage, but only for ours ; 



188 THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 

our duties towards liim being like vapors as- 
cending from the earth, not at all to refresh 
the region of the clouds, but to return back in 
a fruitful and refreshing shower ; and God cre- 
ated us, not that we can increase his felicity, 
but that he might have a subject receptive of 
felicity from him. 

What a prodigy of favor is it to us, that he 
hath passed by so many forms of his creatures, 
and hath not set us down in the rank of any of 
them, till we came to be "paulo minores an- 
gelis" a little lower than the angels ? and yet 
from the meanest of them God can perfect his 
own praise. The deeps and the snows, the 
hail and the rain, the birds of the air and the 
fishes of the sea, they can and do glorify God, 
and give him praise in their capacity. And yet 
he gave them no speech, no reason, no immor- 
tal spirit, or capacity of eternal blessedness. 
But he hath distinguished us from them by the 
absolute issues of his predestination, and hath 
given us a lasting and eternal spirit, excellent 
organs of perception, and wonderful instru- 
ments of expression, that we may join in con- 
sort with the morning-star, and bear a part in 
the chorus with the angels of light, to sing 
hallelujah to the great Father of men and 
angels. 

The poorest person amongst us, besides the 
blessings and graces already reckoned, hath 



THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY, 189 

enough about liim, and the accidents of every 
day, to shame him into repentance. Does not 
God send his angels to keep thee in all thy 
way ? Are not they ministering spirits sent 
forth to wait upon thee as thy guard ? Art not 
thou kept from drowning, from fracture of 
bones, from madness, from deformities, by the 
riches of the divine goodness ? Tell the joints 
of thy body, dost thou want a finger ? and if 
thou dost not understand how great a blessing 
that is, do but remember how ill thou canst 
spare the use of it when thou hast but a thorn 
in it. The very privative blessings, the bless- 
ings of immunity, safeguard, and integrity, 
which we all enjoy, deserve a thanksgiving of 
a whole life. If God should send a cancer 
upon thy face, or a wolf into thy breast, if he 
should spread a crust of leprosy upon thy skin, 
what wouldest thou give to be but as now thou 
art? Wouldest not thou repent of thy sins 
upon that condition ? Which is the greater 
blessing, — to be kept from them, or to be 
cured of them ? 



i 



THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY. 

N the tomb of Terentia certain lamps burned 
under-ground many ages together; but as 



190 MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 

soon as ever they were brought into the air, 
and saw a bigger light, they went out, never to 
be reenkindled. So long as we are in the re- 
tirements of sorrow, of want, of fear, of sick- 
ness, or of any sad accident, we are " burning 
and shining lamps " ; but when God comes 
with his forbearance, and lifts us up from the 
gates of death, and carries us abroad into the 
open air, that we converse with prosperity and 
temptation, we go out in darkness ; and we 
cannot be preserved in heat and light but by 
still dwelling in the regions of sorrow. 



MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 

TF God suffers men to go on in sins, and 
-*- punishes them not, it is not a mercy, it is 
not a forbearance ; it is a hardening them, a 
consigning them to ruin and reprobation : and 
themselves give the best argument to prove it ; 
for they continue in their sin, they multiply 
their iniquity, and every day grow more an 
enemy to God ; and that is no mercy that in- 
creases their hostility and enmity with God. 
A prosperous iniquity is the most unprosperous 
condition in the whole world. " When he slew 
them, they sought him, and turned them early, 
and inquired after God " : but as long as they 



MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 191 

prevailed upon their enemies, " they forgot 
that God was their strength, and the high God 
was their redeemer." It was well observed 
by the Persian ambassador of old, — when he 
was telling the king a sad story of the over- 
throw of all his army by the Athenians, he 
adds this of his own, — that the day before the 
fight, the young Persian gallants, being confi- 
dent they should destroy their enemies, were 
drinking drunk, and railing at the timorousness 
and fears of religion, and against all their gods, 
saying there were no such things, and that all 
things came by chance and industry, nothing 
by the providence of the Supreme Power, 
But the next day, when they had fought un- 
prosperously, and flying from their enemies, 
who were eager in their pursuit, they came to 
the river Strymon, which was so frozen that 
their boats could not launch, and yet it began 
to thaw, so that they feared the ice would not 
bear them ; then you should see the bold gal- 
lants, that the day before said there was no 
God, most timorously and superstitiously fall 
upon their faces, and beg of God that the 
river Strymon might bear them over from their 
enemies. 

What wisdom and philosophy, and perpetual 
experience and revelation, and promises and 
blessings cannot do, a mighty fear can ; it can 
allay the confidences of bold lust and imperious 



192 MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 

sin, and soften our spirit into the lowness of a 
child, our revenge into the charity of prayers, 
our impudence into the blushings of a chidden 
girl; and therefore God hath taken a course 
proportionable : for he is not so unmercifully 
merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust, and 
hatch the egg to the bigness of a cockatrice. 
And therefore observe how it is that God's 
mercy prevails over all his works. It is even 
then when nothing can be discerned but his 
judgments. For as when a famine had been 
in Israel in the days of Ahab for three years 
and a half, when the angry prophet Elijah met 
the king, and presently a great wind arose, and 
the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked 
abroad, and the face of the heavens was black 
and all tempest, yet then the prophet was the 
most gentle, and God began to forgive, and 
the heavens were more beautiful than when the 
sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bride- 
groom, going from his chambers of the east: 
so it is in the economy of the divine mercy ; 
when God makes our faces black, and the 
winds blow so loud till the cordage cracks, 
and our gay fortunes split, and our houses 
are dressed with cypress and yew, and the 
mourners go about the streets, this is nothing 
but the " pompa misericordice" — this is the 
funeral of our sins, dressed indeed with em- 
blems of mourning, and proclaimed with sad 



MERCY AND JUDGMENT. 193 

accents of death ; but the sight is refreshing 
as the beauties of the field which God had 
blessed, and the sounds are healthful as the 
noise of a physician. 

But however we sleep in the midst of such 
alarms, yet know that there is not one death in 
all the neighborhood but is intended to thee ; 
every crowing of the cock is to awake thee to 
repentance. And if thou sleepest still, the next 
turn may be thine ; God will send his angel, as 
he did to Peter, and smite thee on thy side, 
and awake thee from thy dead sleep of sin 
and sottishness. But beyond this some are 
despisers still, and hope to drown the noises 
of Mount Sinai, the sound of cannons, of thun- 
ders and lightnings, with a counter-noise of 
revelling and clamorous roarings, with merry 
meetings ; like the sacrifices to Moloch, they 
sound drums and trumpets that they might not 
hear the sad shriekings of their children as they 
were dying in the cavity of the brazen idol. 
And when their conscience shrieks out or mur- 
murs in a sad melancholy, or something that is 
dear to them is smitten, they attempt to drown 
it in a sea of drink, in the heathenish noises of 
idle and drunken company; and that which 
God sends to lead them to repentance leads 
them to a tavern, not to refresh their needs of 
nature, or for ends of a tolerable civility, or in- 
nocent purposes, but, like the condemned per- 

13 



194 PRIMITIVE PIETY. 

sons among the Levantines, they tasted wine 
freely that they might die and be insensible. 

He that is full of stripes and troubles, and 
decked round about with thorns, he is near to 
God. But he that, because he sits uneasily 
when he sits near the King that was crowned 
with thorns, shall remove thence, or strew 
flowers, roses and jessamine, the down of this- 
tles and the softest gossamer, that he may die 
without pain, die quietly and like a lamb, sink 
to the bottom of hell without noise ; this man 
is a fool, because he accepts death if it arrests 
him in civil language, is content to die by the 
sentence of an eloquent judge, and prefers a 
quiet passage to hell before going to heaven 
in a storm. 



PRIMITIVE PIETY. 

TTTHEN Christianity, like the day-spring from 
" " the east, with a new light did not only 
enlighten the world, but amazed the minds 
of men, and entertained their curiosities, and 
seized upon their warmer and more pregnant 
affections, it was no wonder that whole nations 
were converted at a sermon, and multitudes 
were instantly professed, and their understand- 
ings followed their affections, and their wills 



PRIMITIVE PIETY. 195 

followed their understandings, and they were 
convinced by miracle, and overcome by grace, 
and passionate with zeal, and wisely governed 
by their guides, and ravished with the sanctity 
of the doctrine and the holiness of their exam- 
ples. And this was not only their duty, but 
a great instance of providence, that by the 
great religion and piety of the first professors, 
Christianity might be firmly planted, and un- 
shaken by scandal, and hardened by persecu- 
tion; and that these first lights might be ac- 
tual precedents forever, and copies for us to 
transcribe in all descending ages of Christian- 
ity, that thither we might run to fetch oil to 
enkindle our extinguished lamps. 

Men of old looked upon themselves as they 
stood by the examples and precedents of mar- 
tyrs, and compared their piety to the life of St. 
Paul, and estimated their zeal by flames of the 
Boanerges, St. James and his brother; and 
the bishops were thought reprovable as they 
fell short of the ordinary government of St. 
Peter and St. John ; and the assemblies of 
Christians were so holy that every meeting had 
religion enough to hallow a house and convert 
it to a church ; and every day of feasting was 
a communion ; and every fasting-day w as a 
day of repentance and alms ; and every day 
of thanksgiving was a day of joy and alms ; 
and religion began all their actions, and prayer 



196 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

consecrated them ; and they ended in charity 
and were not polluted with design : they de- 
spised the world heartily and pursued after 
heaven greedily ; they knew no ends but to 
serve God and to be saved ; and had no de- 
signs upon their neighbors but to lead them 
to God and to felicity. 



GROWTH IN GRACE. 

A MAN" cannot, after a state of sin, be in- 
-*-*- stantly a saint ; the work of heaven is not 
done by a flash of lightning, or a dash of affec- 
tionate rain, or a few tears of a relenting pity. 
Remember that God sent you into the world 
for religion : we are but to pass through our 
pleasant fields or our hard labors, but to lodge 
a little while in our fair palaces or our meaner 
cottages, but to bait in the way at our full 
tables or with our spare diet; but then only 
man does his proper employment when he 
prays, and does charity, and mortifies his un- 
ruly appetites, and restrains his violent pas- 
sions, and becomes like to God, and imitates 
his holy Son, and writes after the copies of 
apostles and saints. 

The canes of Egypt, when they newly arise 
from their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start 



GROWTR IN GRACE. 197 

up into an equal and continual length, and are 
interrupted but with few knots, and are strong 
and beauteous with great distances and inter- 
vals : but when they are grown to their full 
length, they lessen into the point of a pyramid, 
and multiply their knots and joints, interrupt- 
ing the fineness and smoothness of its body. 
So are the steps and declensions of him that 
does not grow in grace. At first, when he 
springs up from his impurity by the waters 
of baptism and repentance, he grows straight 
and strong, and suffers but few interruptions 
of piety ; and his constant courses of religion 
are but rarely intermitted, till they ascend up 
to a full age, or towards the ends of their life ; 
then they are weak, and their devotions often 
intermitted, and their breaches are frequent, 
and they seek excuses and labor for dispen- 
sations, and love God and religion less and 
less, till their old age, instead of a crown of 
their virtue and perseverance, ends in levity 
and unprofitable courses ; light and useless as 
the tufted feathers upon the cane, every wind 
can play with it and abuse it, but no man can 
make it useful. When, therefore, our piety 
interrupts its greater and more solemn ex- 
pressions, and upon the return of the greater 
offices and bigger solemnities we find them 
to come upon our spirits like the wave of a 
tide, which retired only because it was natural 



198 GROWTH IN GRACE. 

so to do, and yet came farther upon the strand 
at the next rolling; when every new confes- 
sion, every succeeding communion, every time 
of separation for more solemn and intense 
prayer is better spent and more affectionate, 
leaving a greater relish upon the spirit, and 
possessing greater portions of our affections, 
our reason and our choice ; then we may 
give God thanks, who hath given us more 
grace to use that grace, and a blessing to en- 
deavor our duty, and a blessing upon our en- 
deavor. 

In all cases, the well-grown Christian, he 
that improves or goes forward in his way to 
heaven, brings virtue forth, not into discourses 
and panegyrics, but into his life and manners. 
His virtue, although it serves many good ends 
accidentally, yet, by his intention, it only sup- 
presses his inordinate passions, makes him tem- 
perate and chaste, casts out his devils of drunk- 
enness and lust, pride and rage, malice and re- 
venge ; it makes him useful to his brother, and 
a servant of God. And although these flowers 
cannot choose but please his eye and delight 
his smell, yet he chooses to gather honey, and 
lick up the dew of heaven, and feasts his spirit 
upon the manna, and dwells not in the collat- 
eral usages and accidental sweetnesses which 
dwell at the gated of other senses ; but, like 
a bee, loads his thighs with wax and his bag 



GROWTH IN am. 199 

with honey, that is, with the useful parts of 
virtue, in order to holiness and felicity. 

Though the great physician of our souls hath 
mingled profits and pleasures with virtue, to 
make its chalice sweet and apt to be drank off; 
yet he that takes out the sweet ingredient and 
feasts his palate with the less wholesome part 
because it is delicious, serves a low end of 
sense or interest, but serves not God at all, 
and as little does benefit to his soul. Such 
a person is like Homer's bird, deplumes him- 
self to feather all the naked callows that he 
sees ; and holds a taper that may light others 
to heaven, while he burns his own fingers. But 
a well-grown person, out of habit and choice, 
out of love and virtue and just intention, goes 
on his journey in straight ways to heaven, even 
when the bridle and coercion of laws, or the 
spurs of interest or reputation are laid aside ; 
and desires witnesses of his actions, not that he 
may advance his fame, but for reverence and 
fear, and to make it still more necessary to do 
holy things. 



w 



GROWTH IN SIN. 

HEN we see a child strike a servant 
rudely, or jeer a silly person, or wittingly 



200 GROWTH IN 8JN. 

cheat his playfellow, or talk words light as the 
skirt of a summer garment, we laugh and are 
delighted with the wit and confidence of the 
boy, and encourage such hopeful beginnings ; 
and in the mean time we consider not that from 
these beginnings he shall grow up till he be- 
come a tyrant, an oppressor, a goat, and a 
traitor. No man is discerned to be vicious 
so soon as he is so ; and vices have their 
infancy and their childhood ; and it cannot 
be expected that in a child's age should be 
the vice of a man ; that were monstrous, as 
if he wore a beard in his cradle ; and we do 
not believe that a serpent's sting does just 
then grow when he strikes us in a vital part ; 
the venom and the little spear was there when 
it first began to creep from his little shell. 

For so have I seen the little purls of a spring 
sweat through the bottom of a bank and inten- 
erate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made 
it fit for the impression of a child's foot ; and it 
was despised, like the descending pearls of a 
misty morning, till it had opened its way and 
made a stream large enough to carry away the 
ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade 
the neighboring gardens: but then the despised 
drops were grown into an artificial river and an 
intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances 
of sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty 
prayer, and cheeked into sobriety by the eye 



GROWTH IN SIN. 201 

of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single 
sermon : but when such beginnings are neg- 
lected, and our religion hath not in it so 
much philosophy as to think anything evil as 
long as we can endure it, they grow up to 
ulcers and pestilential evils ; they destroy the 
soul by their abode, who at their first entry 
might have been killed with the pressure of 
a little finger. 

I wish we lived in an age in which the 
people were to be treated with concerning re- 
nouncing the single actions of sin, and the sel- 
dom interruptions of piety. Certain it is, that 
God hath given us precepts of such a holiness 
and such a purity, such a meekness and such 
humility, as hath no pattern but Christ, no prec- 
edent but the purities of God : and therefore it 
is intended we should live with a life whose 
actions are not checkered with white and black, 
half sin and half virtue. God's sheep are not 
like Jacob's flock, streaked and spotted; it is 
an entire holiness that God requires, and will 
not endure to have a holy course interrupted 
by the dishonor of a base and ignoble action. 
I do not mean that a man's life can be as pure 
as the sun, or the rays of celestial Jerusalem; 
but like the moon, in which there are spots, 
but they are no deformity; a lessening only 
and an abatement of light, no cloud to hinder 
and draw a veil before its face, but sometimes 



202 GROWTH IN SIN 

it is not so serene and bright as at other 
times. 

Every man hath his indiscretions and infir- 
mities, his arrests and sudden incursions, his 
neighborhoods and semblances of sin, his little 
violences to reason, and peevish melancholy, 
and humorous fantastic discourses, unaptness 
to a devout prayer, his fondness to judge fa- 
vorable in his own cases, little deceptions, and 
voluntary and involuntary cozenages, ignoran- 
ces and inadvertencies, careless hours and un- 
watchful seasons. But no good man can ever 
commit one act of adultery ; no godly man will, 
at any time, be drunk ; or if he be, he ceases 
to be a godly man, and is run into the confines 
of death, and is sick at heart, and may die of 
the sickness, die eternally. This happens more 
frequently in persons of an infant piety, when 
the virtue is not corroborated by a long abode, 
and a confirmed resolution, and an usual vic- 
tory, and a triumphant grace : and the longer 
we are accustomed to piety, the more unfre- 
quent will be the little breaches of folly, and a 
returning to sin. But as the needle of a com- 
pass, when it is directed to its beloved star, at 
the first addresses waves on either side, and 
seems indifferent in his courtship of the rising 
or declining sun, and when it seems first deter- 
mined to the north, stands awhile trembling, as 
if it suffered inconvenience in the first fruition 



GROWTH IN SIN 203 

of its desires, and stands not still in frill enjoy- 
ment till after first a great variety of motion, 
and then in an undisturbed posture : so is 
the piety and so is the conversion of a man 
wrought by degrees and several steps of imper- 
fection : and at first our choices are wavering, 
convinced by the grace of God, and yet not per- 
suaded ; and then persuaded, but not resolved ; 
and then resolved, but deferring to begin ; and 
then beginning, but (as all beginnings are) in 
weakness and uncertainty ; and we fly out 
often into huge indiscretions and look back 
to Sodom, and long to return to Egypt : and 
when the storm is quite over, we find little bub- 
blings and unevennesses upon the face of the 
waters, — we often weaken our own purposes 
by the returns of sin ; and we do not call our- 
selves conquerors, till by the long possession of 
virtues it is a strange and unusual, and therefore 
an uneasy and unpleasant thing, to act a crime. 

He that hath passed many stages of a good 
life, to prevent his being tempted to a single 
sin, must be very careful that he never enter- 
tain his spirit with the remembrances of his past 
sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehen- 
sions of the present. When the Israelites fan- 
cied the sapidness and relish of the fleshpots, 
they longed to taste and to return. 

So when a Lybian tiger, drawn from his 
wilder foragings, is shut up and taught to eat 



204 GROWTH IN SIN 

civil meat, and suffer the authority of a man, 
he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to 
his keeper fear and reverence for his meat. 
But if he chance to come again and taste a 
draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into 
his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from 
eating those hands that brought him discipline 
and food. So is the nature of a man made 
tame and gentle by the grace of God, and re- 
duced to reason, and kept in awe by religion 
and laws, and by an awful virtue is taught to 
forget those alluring and sottish relishes of sin. 
But if he diverts from his path, and snatches 
handfuls from the wanton vineyards, and re- 
members the lasciviousness of his unwholesome 
food that pleased his childish palate, then he 
grows sick again and hungry after unwhole- 
some diet, and longs for the apples of Sodom. 
A man must walk through the world without 
eyes or ears, fancy or appetite, but such as are 
created and sanctified by the grace of God; 
and being once made a new man, he must 
serve all the needs of nature by the appetites 
and faculties of grace ; nature must be wholly 
a servant: and we must so look towards the 
deliciousness of our religion and the ravish- 
ments of heaven, that our memory must be 
forever useless to the affairs and perceptions 
of sin. We cannot stand, we cannot live, 
unless we be curious and watcliful in this par- 
ticular. 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 205 

Every delay of return is, in the case of 
habitual sins, an approach to desperation, be- 
cause the nature of habits is like that of the 
crocodiles, they grow as long as they live ; and 
if they come to obstinacy or confirmation, they 
are in hell already, and can never return back. 
For so the Pannonian bears, when they have 
clasped a dart in the region of their liver, 
wheel themselves upon the wound, and with 
anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly 
barb deeper, and cannot be quit from that fatal 
steel, but, in flying, bear along that which them- 
selves make the instrument of a more hasty 
death. So is every vicious person struck with 
a deadly wound, and his own hands force it 
into the entertainments of the heart ; and be- 
cause it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp 
and salutary repentance, he still rolls and turns 
upon his wound, and carries his death in his 
bowels, where it first entered by choice, and 
then dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the 
tragedy by divine judgments and an unalterable 
decree. 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 

OUPPOSE a man gets all the world, what 
^ is it that he gets? It is a bubble and a 
phantasm, and hath no reality beyond a pres- 



206 WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 

ent transient use ; a thing that is impossible to 
be enjoyed, because its fruits and usages are 
transmitted to us by parts and by succession. 
He that hath all the world, (if we can suppose 
such a man,) cannot have a dish of fresh sum- 
mer fruits in the midst of winter, not so much 
as a green fig : and very much of its possessions 
is so hid, so fugacious and of so uncertain pur- 
chase, that it is like the riches of the sea to the 
lord of the shore ; all the fish and wealth within 
all its hollownesses are his, but he is never the 
better for what he cannot get. All the shell- 
fish that produce pearl, produce them not for 
him ; and the bowels of the earth shall hide 
her treasures in undiscovered retirements. So 
that it will signify as much to this great pur- 
chaser to be entitled to an inheritance in the 
upper region of the air ; he is so far from pos- 
sessing all its riches, that he does not so much 
as know of them, nor understand the philosophy 
of her minerals. 

I consider, that he that is the greatest pos- 
sessor in the world, enjoys its best and most 
noble parts, and those which are of most excel- 
lent perfection, but in common with the inferior 
persons and the most despicable of his king- 
dom. Can the greatest prince enclose the 
sun and set one little star in his cabinet for 
his own use ? Or secure to himself the gentle 
and benign influences of any one constellation ? 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 207 

Are not his subjects' fields bedewed with the 
same showers that water his gardens of pleas- 
ure? 

Nay, those things which he esteems his orna- 
ment and the singularity of his possessions, are 
they not of more use to others than to himself? 
For suppose his garments splendid and shining 
like the robe of a cherub or the clothing of the 
fields, all that he that wears them enjoys, is, 
that they keep him warm and clean and mod- 
est ; and all this is done by clean and less pom- 
pous vestments ; and the beauty of them, which 
distinguishes him from others, is made to please 
the eyes of the beholders ; and he is like a fair 
bird, or the meretricious painting of a wanton 
woman, made wholly to be looked on, that is, 
to be enjoyed by every one but himself. And 
the fairest face and the sparkling eye cannot 
perceive or enjoy their own beauties, but by 
reflection. It is I that am pleased with behold- 
ing his gayety, and the gay man in his greatest 
bravery is only pleased because I am pleased 
with the sight ; so borrowing his little and im- 
aginary complacency from the delight that I 
have, not from any inherency of his own pos- 
session. 

The poorest artisan of Rome, walking in 
Caesar's gardens, had the same pleasures which 
they ministered to their lord. And although 
it may be he was put to gather fruits to eat 



208 WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 

from another place, yet his other senses were 
delighted equally with Caesar's. The birds 
made him as good music, the flowers gave him 
as sweet smells, he there sucked as good air, 
and delighted in the beauty and order of the 
place, for the same reason and upon the same 
perception as the prince himself; save only 
that Caesar paid for all that pleasure vast sums 
of money, the blood and treasure of a province, 
which the poor man had for nothing. 

Suppose a man lord of all the world, (for 
still we are but in supposition,) yet since every- 
thing is received not according to its own 
greatness and worth, but according to the ca- 
pacity of the receiver, it signifies very little as 
to our content, or to the riches of our posses- 
sion. If any man should give to a lion a fair 
meadow full of hay, or a thousand quince- 
trees ; or should give to the goodly bull, the 
master and the fairest of the whole herd, a 
thousand fair stags ; if a man should present to 
a child a ship laden with Persian carpets, and 
the ingredients of the rich scarlet ; all these, 
being disproportionate either to the appetite or 
to the understanding, could add nothing of 
content, and might declare the freeness of the 
presenter, but they upbraid the incapacity of 
the receiver. And so it does if God should 
give the whole world to any man. He knows 
not what to do with it ; he can use no more 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 209 

but according to the capacities of a man ; he 
can use nothing but meat and drink and 
clothes ; and infinite riches, that can give him 
changes of raiment every day and a full table, 
do but give him a clean trencher every bit he 
eats ; it signifies no more but wantonness, and 
variety to the same, not to new purposes. 

He to whom the world can be given to any 
purpose greater than a private estate can min- 
ister, must have new capacities created in him : 
he needs the understanding of an angel, to 
take the accounts of his estate ; he had need 
have a stomach like fire or the grave, for else 
he can eat no more than one of his healthful 
subjects ; and unless he hath an eye like the 
sun, and a motion like that of a thought, and a 
bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven, the 
pleasure of his eye can be no greater than to 
behold the beauty of a little prospect from. a 
hill, or to look upon the heap of gold packed 
up in a little ' room, or to dote upon a cabinet 
of jewels, better than which there is no man 
that sees at all but sees every day. For, not 
to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds 
of heaven, a man's, or a woman's, or a hawk's 
eye is more beauteous and excellent than all 
the jewels of his crown. And when we re- 
member that a beast, who hath quicker senses 
than a man, yet hath not so great delight in 
the fruition of any object, because he wants 
14 



210 WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 

understanding, and the power to make reflex 
acts upon his perception ; it will follow, that 
understanding and knowledge is the greatest 
instrument of pleasure, and he that is most 
knowing hath a capacity to become happy, 
which a less knowing prince or a rich person 
hath not ; and in this only a man's capacity is 
capable of enlargement. But then, although 
they only have power to relish any pleasure 
rightly, who rightly understand the nature and 
degrees, and essences, and ends of things ; yet 
they that do so, understand also the vanity and 
the unsatisfyingness of the things of this world, 
so that the relish which could not be great but 
in a great understanding, appears contemptible, 
because its vanity appears at the same time ; 
the understanding sees all, and sees through it. 
The greatest vanity of this world is remark- 
able in this, that all its joys summed up to- 
gether are not big enough to counterpoise the 
evil of one sharp disease, or to allay a sorrow. 
For imagine a man great in his dominion as 
Cyrus, rich as Solomon, victorious as David, 
beloved like Titus, learned as Trismegist, pow- 
erful as all the Roman greatness ; all this, and 
the results of all this, give him no more pleas- 
ure in the midst of a fever or the tortures of 
the stone, than if he were only lord of a little 
dish, and a dishful of fountain-water. Indeed 
the excellency of a holy conscience is a comfort 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 211 

and a magazine of joy, so great, that it sweet- 
ens the most bitter potion of the world, and 
makes tortures and death not only tolerable, 
but amiable ; and therefore to part with this 
whose excellency is so great, for the world, 
that is of so inconsiderable a worth, as not to 
have in it recompense enough for the sorrows 
of a sharp disease, is a bargain fit to be made 
by none but fools and madmen. Antiochus 
Epiphanes, and Herod the Great, and his 
grandchild Agrippa, were sad instances of this 
great truth ; to every of which it happened, 
that the grandeur of their fortune, the great- 
ness of their possessions, and the increase of 
their estate disappeared and expired like cam- 
phor, at their arrest by those several sharp 
diseases, which covered their heads with cy- 
press, and hid their crowns in an inglorious 
grave. 

For what can all the world minister to a sick 
person, if it represents all the spoils of nature 
and the choicest delicacies of land and sea ? 
Alas ! his appetite is lost, and to see a pebble- 
stone is more pleasing to him ; for he can look 
upon that without loathing, but not so upon 
the most delicious fare that ever made famous 
the Roman luxury. Perfumes make his head 
ache. If you load him with jewels, you press 
him with a burden as troublesome as his grave- 
stone. And what pleasure is in all those pos- 



212 WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 

sessions that cannot make his pillow easy, nor 
tame the rebellion of a tumultuous humor, nor 
restore the use of a withered hand, or straight- 
en a crooked finger ? Vain is the hope of that 
man whose soul rests upon vanity and such 
unprofitable possessions. 

Suppose a man lord of all this world, a 
universal monarch, as some princes have lately 
designed, — all that cannot minister content to 
him ; not that content which a poor contem- 
plative man, by the strength of Christian phi- 
losophy and the support of a very small fortune, 
daily does enjoy. All his power and greatness 
cannot command the sea to overflow his shores, 
or to stay from retiring to the opposite strand. 
It cannot make his children dutiful or wise. 
And though the world admired at the great- 
ness of Philip the Second's fortune in the ac- 
cession of Portugal and the East Indies to his 
principalities, yet this could not allay the infe- 
licity of his family and the unhandsomeness of 
his condition, in having a proud and indiscreet 
and a vicious young prince likely to inherit all 
his greatness. And if nothing appears in the 
face of such a fortune to tell all the world that 
it is spotted and imperfect, yet there is in all 
conditions of the world such weariness and 
tediousness of spirits, that a man is ever more 
pleased with hopes of going off from the pres- 
ent than in dwelling upon that condition which, 



WORLDLY POSSESSIONS. 213 

it may be, others admire and think beauteous, 
but none knoweth the smart of it but he that 
drank off the little pleasure and felt the ill-rel- 
ish of the appendage. How many kings have 
groaned under the burden of their crowns, 
and have sunk down and died ! How many 
have quitted their pompous cares and retired 
into private lives, there to enjoy the pleasures 
of philosophy and religion, which their thrones 
denied ! 

That is a sad condition when, like Midas, all 
that the man touches shall turn to gold : and 
his is no better to whom a perpetual full table, 
not recreated with fasting, not made pleasant 
with intervening scarcity, ministers no more 
good than a heap of gold does ; that is, he hath 
no benefit of it, save the beholding of it with 
his eyes. Cannot a man quench his thirst as 
well out of an urn or chalice, as out of a whole 
river ? It is an ambitious thirst and a pride of 
draught, that had rather lay his mouth to Eu- 
phrates than to a petty goblet ; but if he had 
rather, it adds not so much to his content as 
to his danger and his vanity. For so I have 
heard of persons whom the river hath swept 
away, together with the turf they pressed, when 
they stopped to drown their pride rather than 
their thirst. 



214 EXCELLENCE OF THE SOUL. 



EXCELLENCE OF THE SOUL. 

TF we consider what the soul is, in its own 
-*- capacity to happiness, we shall find it to be 
an excellency greater than the sun, of an angel- 
ical substance, sister to a cherub, an image of 
the divinity, and the great argument of that 
mercy whereby God did distinguish us from 
the lower form of beasts and trees and min- 
erals. 

The soul is all that whereby we may be, and 
without which we cannot be, happy. It is not 
the eye that sees the beauties of the heaven, 
nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music 
or the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but 
the soul that perceives all the relishes of sen- 
sual and intellectual perfections ; and the more 
noble and excellent the soul is, the greater and 
more savory are its perceptions. And if a 
child beholds the rich ermine, or the diamonds 
of a starry night, or the order of the world, or 
hears the discourses of an apostle, because he 
makes no reflex acts upon himself, and sees 
not that he sees, he can have but the pleasure 
of a fool, or the deliciousness of a mule. But 
although the reflection of its own acts be a rare 
instrument of pleasure or pain respectively, yet 
the soul's excellence is upon the same reason 
not perceived by us, by which the sapidness 



EXCELLENCE OF THE SOUL. 215 

of pleasant things of nature are not understood 
by a child ; even because the soul cannot re- 
flect far enough. For as the sun, which is the 
fountain of light and heat, makes violent and 
direct emissions of his rays from himself, but 
reflects them no farther than to the bottom of 
a cloud, or the lowest imaginary circle of the 
middle region, and therefore receives not a 
duplicate of its own heat ; so is the soul of 
man: it reflects upon its own inferior actions 
of particular sense or general understanding ; 
but because it knows little of its own nature, 
the manners of volition, the immediate instru- 
ments of understanding, the way how ii^ comes 
to meditate, and cannot discern how a sudden 
thought arrives, or the solution of a doubt not 
depending upon preceding premises ; there- 
fore above half its pleasures are abated, and 
its own worth less understood : and possibly it 
is the better it is so. If the elephant knew his 
strength, or the horse the vigorousness of his 
own spirit, they would be as rebellious against 
their rulers as unreasonable men against gov- 
ernment : nay, the angels themselves, because 
their light reflected home to their orbs, and 
they understood all the secrets of their own 
perfection, they grew vertiginous, and fell from 
the battlements of heaven. 



216 THE REWARDS OF VIRTUE. 



THE REWARDS OF VIRTUE. 

npHE things of God are the noblest satisfac- 
-*- tions to those desires which ought to be 
cherished and swelled up to infinite ; their 
deliciousness is vast and full of relish ; and 
their very appendant thorns are to be chosen, 
for they are gilded, they are safe and medic- 
inal, they heal the wound they make, and 
bring forth fruit of a blessed and a holy life. 
The things of God and of religion are easy 
and sweet, they bear entertainments in their 
hand and reward at their back ; their good is 
certain and perpetual, and they make us cheer- 
ful to-day, and pleasant to-morrow ; and spirit- 
ual songs end not in a sigh and a groan, but 
they bring us to the felicity of God, the same 
yesterday and to-day and forever. They do 
not give a private and particular delight, but 
their benefit is public ; like the incense of the 
altar, it sends up a sweet smell to heaven, and 
makes atonement for the religious man that 
kindled it, and delights all the standers-by, 
and makes the very air wholesome. There is 
no blessed soul goes to heaven but he makes 
a general joy in all the mansions where the 
saints do dwell, and in all the chapels where 
the angels sing ; and the joys of religion are 
not univocal, but productive of rare and acci- 



THE REWARDS OF VIRTUE. 217 

dental and preternatural pleasures ; for the 
music of holy hymns delights the ear and re- 
freshes the spirit, and makes the very bones 
of the saints to rejoice. And charity, or the 
giving alms to the poor, does not only ease the 
poverty of the receiver, but makes the giver 
rich, and heals his sickness, and delivers from 
death. And temperance, though it be in the 
matter of meat and drink and pleasures, yet 
hath an effect upon the understanding, and 
makes the reason sober, and the will orderly, 
and the affections regular, and does things be- 
side and beyond their natural and proper effi- 
cacy : for all the parts of our duty are watered 
with the showers of blessing, and bring forth 
fruit according to the influence of heaven, and 
beyond the capacities of nature. 

But they that will not deny a lust, nor re- 
frain an appetite, they that will be drunk when 
their friends do merrily constrain them, or love 
a cheap religion, and a gentle and lame prayer, 
short and soft, quickly said and soon passed 
over, seldom returning and but little observed, 
how is it possible that they should think them- 
selves persons disposed to receive such glorious 
crowns and sceptres, such excellent conditions, 
which they have not faith enough to believe, 
nor attention enough to consider, and no man 
can have wit enough to understand ? But so 
might an Arcadian shepherd look from the 



218 RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT. 

rocks, or through the clifts of the valley where 
his sheep graze, and wonder that the messen- 
ger stays so long from coming to him to be 
crowned king of all the Greek islands, or to be 
adopted heir to the Macedonian monarchy. It 
is an infinite love of God that we have heaven 
upon conditions which we can perform with 
greatest diligence : but, truly, the lives of men 
are generally such that they do things in order 
to heaven, things (I say) so few, so trifling, so 
unworthy, that they are not proportionable to 
the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow rib- 
bon, the slender reward with which the Ro- 
mans paid their soldiers for their extraordinary 
valor. True it is, that heaven is not in a just 
sense of a commutation, a reward, but a gift, 
and an infinite favor : but yet it is not reached 
forth but to persons disposed by the conditions 
of God ; which conditions when we pursue in 
kind, let us be very careful we do not fail of 
the mighty prize of our high calling for want 
of degrees and just measures, the measures of 
zeal and a mighty love. 



RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT. 

npHOSE sects of Christians, whose professed 
doctrine brings destruction and diminution 






RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT. 219 

to government, give the most intolerable scan- 
dal and dishonor to the institution ; and it had 
been impossible that Christianity should have 
prevailed over the wisdom and power of the 
Greeks and Romans, if it had not been humble 
to superiors, patient of injuries, charitable to 
the needy, a great exacter of obedience to 
kings, even to heathens, that they might be 
won and convinced; and to persecutors, that 
they might be sweetened in their anger, or up- 
braided for their cruel injustice. For so doth 
the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak, 
and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade 
and protection, and leave to grow under its 
branches, and to give and take mutual refresh- 
ment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty 
patronage ; and they grow and dwell together, 
and are the most remarkable of friends and 
married pairs of all the leafy nation. Religion 
of itself is soft, easy, and defenceless, and God 
hath made it grow up with empire, and lean 
upon the arms of kings, and it cannot well 
grow alone ; and if it shall, like the ivy, suck 
the heart of the oak, upon whose body it grew 
and was supported, it will be pulled down from 
its usurped eminence, and fire and shame shall 
be its portion. 



220 HYPOCRISY. 



HYPOCRISY. 

YT7 E do not live in an age in which there is 
" so much need to bid men be wary, as to 
take care that they be innocent. Indeed in 
religion we are usually too loose and ungirt, 
exposing ourselves to temptation, and others to 
offence, and our name to dishonor, and the 
cause itself to reproach, and we are open and 
ready to every evil but persecution. From 
that we are close enough, and that alone we 
call prudence ; but in the matter of interest we 
are wary as serpents, subtle as foxes, vigilant 
as the birds of the night, rapacious as kites, 
tenacious as grappling-hooks and the weightiest 
anchors, and, above all, false and hypocritical 
as a thin crust of ice spread upon the face of a 
deep, smooth, and dissembling pit ; if you set 
your foot, your foot slips, or the ice breaks, and 
you sink into death, and are wound in a sheet 
of water, descending into mischief or your 
grave, suffering a great fall, or a sudden death, 
by your confidence and unsuspecting foot. 
There is a universal crust of hypocrisy that 
covers the face of the greatest part of man- 
kind. Their religion consists in forms and 
outsides, and serves reputation or a design, but 
does not serve God. Their promises are but 
fair language, and the civilities of piazzas or 



HYPOCRISY. 221 

exchanges, and disband and untie like the air 
that beats upon their teeth when they speak 
the delicious and hopeful words. Their oaths 
are snares to catch men, and make them confi- 
dent; their contracts are arts and stratagems 
to deceive, measured by profit and possibility ; 
and everything is lawful that is gainful ; and 
their friendships are trades of getting ; and 
their kindness of watching a dying friend is 
but the office of a vulture, the gaping for a 
legacy, the spoil of the carcase ; and their sick- 
nesses are many times policies of state, some- 
times a design to show the riches of our bed- 
chamber : and their funeral tears are but the 
paranymphs and pious solicitors of a second 
bride. And everything that is ugly must be 
hid, and everything that is handsome must 
be seen : and that will make a fair cover 
for a huge deformity. And therefore it is 
(as they think) necessary that men should 
always have some pretences and forms, some 
faces of religion or sweetness of language, con- 
fident affirmatives or bold oaths, protracted 
treaties or multitude of words, affected silence 
or grave deportment, a good name or a good 
cause, a fair relation or a worthy calling, great 
power or a pleasant wit. Anything that can 
be fair or that can be useful, anything that can 
do good or be thought good, we use it to abuse 
our brother, or promote our interests. Lepo- 



222 CERISTS DISCIPLES. 

rina resolved to die, being troubled for her hus- 
band's danger ; and he resolved to die with 
her that had so great a kindness for him, as 
not to outlive the best of her husband's for- 
tune. It was agreed ; and she tempered the 
poison, and drank the face of the unwholesome 
goblet ; but the weighty poison sunk to the 
bottom, and the easy man drank it all off, and 
died, and the woman carried him forth to fu- 
neral, and after a little illness, which she soon 
recovered, she entered upon the inheritance, 
and a second marriage. 



CHRIST'S DISCIPLES. 

TT7HEN our blessed Saviour told his disciples 
* * that they should sit upon twelve thrones, 
they presently thought they had his bond for a 
kingdom, and dreamed of wealth and honor, 
power and a splendid court ; and Christ knew 
they did, but did not disentangle his promise 
from the enfolded and intricate sense, of which 
his words were naturally capable ; but he per- 
formed his promise to better purposes than 
they hoped for. They were presidents in the 
conduct of souls, princes of God's people, the 
chief in sufferings, stood nearest to the cross, 
had an elder brother's portion in the kingdom 



THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 223 

of grace, were the founders of churches, and 
dispensers of the mysteries of the kingdom, 
and ministers of the spirit of God, and chan- 
nels of mighty blessings, under-mediators in 
the priesthood of their Lord, and " their names 
were written in heaven " : and this was infi- 
nitely better than to groan and wake under a 
head pressed with a golden crown and pungent 
cares, and to eat alone, and to walk in a crowd, 
and to be vexed with all the public and many 
of the private evils of the people, which is the 
sum total of an earthly kingdom. 



THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 

npHE light of the world in the morning of the 
-*■ creation was spread abroad like a curtain, 
and dwelt nowhere, but filled the " expansum" 
with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of 
the air's looser garment, or the wilder fringes 
of the fire, without knots, or order, or combi- 
nation. But God gathered the beams in his 
hand, and united them into a globe of fire, and 
all the light of the world became the body of 
the sun ; and he lent some to his weaker sister 
that walks in the night, and guides a traveller, 
and teaches him to distinguish a house from a 
river, or a rock from a plain field. So is the 



224 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 

mercy of God, a vast " expansum " and a huge 
ocean ; from eternal ages it dwelt round about 
the throne of God,, and it filled all that infinite 
distance and space that hath no measures but 
the will of God ; until God, desiring to com- 
municate that excellence and make it relative, 
created angels, that he might have persons 
capable of huge gifts, and man, who he knew 
would need forgiveness. For so the angels, 
our elder brothers, dwelt forever in the house 
of their father, and never broke his command- 
ments ; but we, the younger, like prodigals, 
forsook our father's house, and went into a 
strange country, and followed stranger courses, 
and spent the portion of our nature, and for- 
feited all our title to the family, and came to 
need another portion. For, ever since the fall 
of Adam, who, like an unfortunate man, spent 
all that a wretched man could need, or a happy 
man could have, our life is repentance, and 
forgiveness is all our portion ; and though 
angels were objects of God's bounty, yet man 
only is (in proper speaking) the object of his 
mercy ; and the mercy which dwelt in an in- 
finite circle, became confined to a little ring, 
and dwelt here below, and here shall dwell be- 
low till it hath carried all God's portion up to 
heaven, where it shall reign and glory upon 
our crowned heads forever and ever. 

But for him that considers God's mercies, 



THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 225 

and dwells awhile in that depth, it is hard not 
to talk wildly and without art and order of dis- 
coursing. St. Peter talked he knew not what, 
when he entered into a cloud with Jesus upon. 
Mount Tabor, though it passed over him like 
the little curtains that ride upon the north- 
wind, and pass between the sun and us. And 
when we converse with a light greater than 
the sun, and taste a sweetness more delicious 
than the dew of heaven, and in our thoughts 
entertain the ravishments and harmony of that 
atonement which reconciles God to man, and 
man to felicity, it will be more easily pardoned 
if we should be like persons that admire much 
and say but little ; and indeed we can best con- 
fess the glories of the Lord by dazzled eyes, 
and a stammering tongue, and a heart over- 
charged with the miracles of this infinity. For 
so those little drops that run over, though they 
be not much in themselves, yet they tell that 
the vessel was full, and could express the great- 
ness of the shower no otherwise but by spilling, 
and inartificial expressions and runnings over. 

But because I have undertaken to tell the 
drops of the ocean, and to span the measures 
of eternity, I must do it by the great lines of 
revelation and experience, and tell concerning 
God's mercy as we do concerning God himself, 
that he is that great fountain of which we all 

drink, and the great rock of which we all eat, 
15 



226 TEE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 

and on which we all dwell, and under whose 
shadow we are all refreshed. God's mercy is 
all this ; and we can only draw great lines of 
it, and reckon the constellations of our hemi- 
sphere instead of telling the number of the 
stars ; we only can reckon what we feel and 
what we live by. And though there be in 
every one of these lines of life enough to en- 
gage us forever to do God service, and to give 
him praises ; yet it is certain there are very- 
many mercies of God upon us, and towards us, 
and concerning us, which we neither feel, nor 
see, nor understand as yet ; but yet we are 
blessed by them, and are preserved and se- 
cured, and we shall then know them when we 
come to give God thanks in the festivities of 
an eternal sabbath. 

In this account concerning the mercies of 
God, I must not reckon the miracles and graces 
of the creation, or anything of the nature of 
man ; nor tell how great an endearment God 
passed upon us, that he made us men, capable 
of felicity, apted with rare instruments of dis- 
course and reason, passions and desires, notices 
of sense, and reflections upon that sense ; that 
we have not the deformity of a crocodile, nor 
the motion of a worm, nor the hunger of a 
wolf, nor the wildness of a tiger, nor the birth 
of vipers, nor the life of flies, nor the death of 
serpents. 



THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 227 

Our excellent bodies and useful faculties, the 
upright motion and the tenacious hand, the fair 
appetites and proportioned satisfactions, our 
speech and our perceptions, our acts of life, 
the rare invention of letters, and the use of 
writing, and speaking at a distance, the inter- 
vals of rest and labor, (either of which, if they 
were perpetual, would be intolerable,) the needs 
of nature and the provisions of providence, 
sleep and business, refreshments of the body 
and entertainments of the soul ; these are to be 
reckoned as acts of bounty rather than mercy. 
God gave us these when he made us, and be- 
fore we needed mercy ; these were portions of 
our nature, or provided to supply our conse- 
quent necessities. But when we forfeited all 
God's favor by our sins, then that they were 
continued or restored to us became a mercy, 
and therefore ought to be reckoned upon this 
new account : for it was a rare mercy that we 
were suffered to live at all, or that the anger of 
God did permit to us one blessing, that he did 
punish us so gently. We looked for a judge, 
and behold a Saviour ; we feared an accuser, 
and behold an advocate ; we sat down in sor- 
row, and rise in joy ; we leaned upon rhubarb 
and aloes, and our aprons were made of the 
sharp leaves of Indian fig-trees, and so we fed, 
and so were clothed ; but the rhubarb proved 
medicinal, and the rough leaf of the tree 



228 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 

brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings ; 
and round about our dwellings was planted a 
hedge of thorns and bundles of thistles, the 
aconite and the briony, the nightshade and the 
poppy ; and at the root of these grew the heal- 
ing plantain, which, rising up into a tallness by 
the friendly invitation of heavenly influence, 
turned about the tree of the cross, and cured 
the wounds of the thorns, and the curse of the 
thistles, and the malediction of man, and the 
wrath of God. 

After all this, we may sit down and reckon 
by great sums and conjugations of his gracious 
gifts, and tell the minutes of eternity by the 
number of the divine mercies. God hath given 
his laws to rule us, his word to instruct us, his 
spirit to guide us, his angels to protect us, his 
ministers to exhort us. He revealed all our 
duty, and lie hath concealed whatsoever can 
hinder us ; he hath affrighted our follies with 
fear of death, and engaged our watchfulness 
by its secret coming ; he hath exercised our 
faith by keeping private the state of souls de- 
parted, and yet hath confirmed our faith by a 
promise of a resurrection, and entertained our 
hope by some general significations of the state 
of interval. His mercies make contemptible 
means instrumental to great purposes, and a 

small herb the remedy of the greatest diseases. 
Ho impedes the devil's rage, and infatuates his 



THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 229 

counsels ; ^lie diverts his malice, and defeats 
his purposes ; he binds him in the chain of 
darkness, and gives him no power over the 
children of light ; he suffers him to walk in soli- 
tary places, and yet fetters him that he cannot 
disturb the sleep of a child ; he hath given him 
mighty power, and yet a young maiden that 
resists him shall make him flee away ; he hath 
given him a vast knowledge, and yet an igno- 
rant man can confute him with the twelve ar- 
ticles of his creed ; he gave him power over the 
winds, and made him prince of the air, and 
yet the breath of a holy prayer can drive him 
as far as the utmost sea ; and he hath so re- 
strained him, that (except it be by faith) we 
know not whether there be any devil, yea or 
no ; for we never heard his noises, nor have 
seen his affrighting shapes. 

This is that great principle of all the felic- 
ity we hope for, and of all the means thither, 
and of all the skill and all the strengths we 
have to use those means. He hath made great 
variety of conditions, and yet hath made all 
necessary, and all mutual helpers ; and by some 
instruments and in some respects they are all 
equal, in order to felicity, to content, and final 
and intermedial satisfaction. He gave us part 
of our reward in hand, that he might enable 
us to work for more : he taught the world 
arts for use, arts for entertainment of all our 



230 THE MIRACLES OF THE DIVINE MERCY. 

faculties and all our dispositions : he gives 
eternal gifts for temporal services, and gives 
us whatsoever we want for asking, and com- 
mands us to ask, and threatens us if we will 
not ask, and punishes us for refusing to be 
happy. This is that glorious attribute that hath 
made order and health, harmony and hope, res- 
titutions and variety, the joys of direct posses- 
sion, and the joys, the artificial joys, of contra- 
riety and comparison. He comforts the poor, 
and he brings down the rich, that they may be 
safe, in their humility and sorrow, from the 
transportations of an unhappy and uninstructed 
prosperity. He gives necessaries to all, and 
scatters the extraordinary provisions so, that 
every nation may traffic in charity, and com- 
mute for pleasures. He was the Lord of hosts, 
and he is still what he was ; but he loves to be 
called the God of peace ; because he was ter- 
rible in that, but he is delighted in this. 

His mercy is his glory, and his glory is the 
light of heaven. His mercy is the life of the 
creation, and it fills all the earth ; and his 
mercy is a sea too, and it fills all the abysses 
of the deep ; it bath given us promises for sup- 
ply of whatsoever we need, and relieves us in 
all our fears, and in all the evils that we suffer. 
His mercies are more than we can tell, and 
they are more than we can feel. For all the 
world in the abyss of the divine mercies is like 






TEE MIRACLES OF TEE DIVINE MERCY. 231 

a man diving into the bottom of the sea, over 
whose head the waters run insensibly and un- 
perceived, and yet the weight is vast, and the 
sum of them is unmeasurable ; and the man is 
not pressed with the burden, nor confounded 
with numbers. And no observation is able 
to recount, no sense sufficient to perceive, no 
memory large enough to retain, no understand- 
ing great enough to apprehend this infinity ; 
but we must admire, and love, and worship, 
and magnify this mercy forever and ever ; that 
we may dwell in w T hat we feel, and be compre- 
hended by that which is equal to God, and the 
parent of all felicity. 

The result of this consideration is, that as we 
fear the divine judgments, so we adore and love 
his goodness, and let the golden chains of the 
divine mercy tie us to a noble prosecution of 
our duty and the interest of religion. For he is 
the worst of men whom kindness cannot soften, 
nor endearment oblige, whom gratitude cannot 
tie faster than the bands of life and death. He 
is an ill-natured sinner, if he will not comply 
with the sweetnesses of heaven, and be civil to 
his angel guardian, or observant of his patron, 
God, who made him, and feeds him, and keeps 
all his faculties, and takes care of him, and en- 
dures his follies, and waits on him more ten- 
derly than a nurse, more diligently than a cli- 
ent ; who hath greater care of him than his 



232 NATIONAL ADVERSITY. 

father, and whose bowels yearn over him with 
more compassion than a mother ; who is boun- 
tiful beyond our need, and merciful beyond our 
hopes, and makes capacities in us to receive 
more. Fear is stronger than death, and love is 
more prevalent than fear, and kindness is the 
greatest endearment of love ; and yet to an 
ingenuous person gratitude is greater than all 
these, and obliges to a solemn duty, when love 
fails, and fear is dull and unactive, and death 
itself is despised. But the man who is hard- 
ened against kindness, and whose duty is not 
made alive with gratitude, must be used like a 
slave, and driven like an ox, and enticed with 
goads and whips ; but must never enter into 
the inheritance of sons. Let us take heed ; for 
mercy is like a rainbow, which God set in the 
clouds to remember mankind : it shines here as 
long as it is not hindered ; but we must never 
look for it after it is night, and it shines not in 
the other world. If we refuse mercy here, we 
shall have justice to eternity. 



NATIONAL ADVERSITY. 

IT is a sad calamity to see a kingdom spoiled 
and a church afflicted ; the priests slain 
with the sword, and the blood of nobles min- 



NATIONAL ADVERSITY. 233 

gled with cheaper sand ; religion made a cause 
of trouble, and the best men most cruelly 
persecuted ; government confounded and laws 
ashamed ; judges decreeing causes in fear and 
covetousness, and the ministers of holy things 
setting themselves against all that is sacred, 
and setting fire upon the fields, and turning in 
little foxes on purpose to destroy the vine- 
yards. And what shall make recompense for 
this heap of sorrows, whenever God shall send 
such swords of fire ? Even the mercies of 
God, w^hich then will be made public, when 
we shall hear such afflicted people sing, " In 
convertendo captivitatem Sion" w r ith the voice 
of joy and festival eucharist among such as 
keep holiday ; and when peace shall become 
sweeter and dwell the longer. And in the 
mean time it serves religion, and the affliction 
shall try the children of God, and God shall 
crown them, and men shall grow wiser and 
more holy, and leave their petty interests, and 
take sanctuary in holy living, and be taught 
temperance by their want, and patience by 
their suffering, and charity by their persecu- 
tion, and shall better understand the duty of 
their relations; and at last the secret worm 
that lay at the root of the plant shall be drawn 
forth and quite extinguished. For so have I 
known a luxuriant vine swell into irregular 
twigs and bold excrescences, and spend itself 



234 EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

in leaves and little rings, and afford but trifling 
clusters to the wine-press, and a faint return to 
his heart, which longed to be refreshed with a 
full vintage : but when the lord of the vine had 
caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant, and 
made it bleed, it grew temperate in its vain ex- 
pense of useless leaves, and knotted into fair 
and juicy branches, and made accounts of that 
loss of blood by the return of fruit. So is an 
afflicted province cured of its surfeits, and pun- 
ished for its sins, and bleeds for its long riot, 
and is left ungoverned for its disobedience, and 
chastised for its wantonness ; and when the 
sword hath let forth the corrupted blood, and 
the fire hath purged the rest, then it enters 
into the double joys of restitution, and gives 
God thanks for his rod, and confesses the mer- 
cies of the Lord in making the smoke to be 
changed into fire, and the cloud into a per- 
fume, the sword into a staff, and his anger into 
mercy. 



EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

V\7E must know that in keeping of God's 
* * commandments every degree of internal 
duly is under the commandments; and there- 
lore whatever we do, we must do it as well as 



EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 235 

we can. Now he that does his duty with the 
biggest affection he can, will also do all that he 
can ; and he can never know that he hath done 
w^hat is commanded, unless he does all that is 
in his power. For God hath put no limit but 
love and possibility; and therefore whoever 
says, Hither will I go and no farther, this I 
will do and no more, thus much will I serve 
God, but that shall be all, — he hath the affec- 
tions of a slave, and the religion of a Pharisee, 
the craft of a merchant, and the falseness of a 
broker ; but he hath not the proper measures 
of the righteousness evangelical. But so it 
happens in the mud and slime of the river 
Borborus, when the eye of the sun hath long 
dwelt upon it, and produces frogs and mice 
which begin to move a little under a thin cover 
of its own parental matter, and if they can get 
loose to live half a life, that is all; but the 
hinder parts, which are not formed before the 
setting of the sun, stick fast in their beds of 
mud, and the little moiety of a creature dies be- 
fore it could be well said to live. So it is with 
those Christians who will do all that they think 
lawful, and will do no more than what they 
suppose necessary ; they do but peep into the 
light of the sun of righteousness ; they have 
the beginnings of life ; but their hinder parts, 
their passions and affections, and the desires of 
the lower man, are still unformed ; and he 



236 WATCHFULNESS. 

that dwells in this state is just so much of a 
Christian as a sponge is of a plant, and a mush- 
room of a shrub : they may be as sensible as 
an oyster, and discourse at the rate of a child, 
but are greatly short of the righteousness 
evangelical. 



WATCHFULNESS. 

TTE that would be free from the slavery of 
■*-"- sin, and the necessity of sinning, must al- 
ways watch. Ay, that 's the point ; but who 
can watch always ? Why, every good man can 
watch always : and that we may not be de- 
ceived in this, let us know that the running 
away from a temptation is a part of our watch- 
fulness, and every good employment is another 
great part of it, and a laying in provision of 
reason and religion beforehand, is yet a third 
part of this watchfulness : and the conversation 
of a Christian is a perpetual watchfulness ; not 
a continual thinking of that one, or those many 
things which may endanger us ; but it is a 
continual doing something directly or indirectly 
against sin. He either prays to God for his 
spirit, or relies upon the promises, or receives 
the sacrament, or goes to his bishop for counsel 
and a blessing, or to his priest for religious 



WATCHFULNESS. 237 

offices, or places himself at the feet of good 
men to hear their wise sayings, or calls for the 
Church's prayers, or does the duty of his call- 
ing, or actually resists temptation, or frequently 
renews his holy purposes, or fortifies himself 
by vows, or searches into his danger by a daily 
examination ; so that in the whole he is for- 
ever upon his guard. This duty and caution 
of a Christian is like watching lest a man cut 
his finger. Wise men do not often cut their 
fingers, and yet every day they use a knife ; 
and a man's eye is a tender thing, and every- 
thing can do it wrong, can put it out ; yet be- 
cause we love our eyes so well, in the midst of 
so many dangers, by God's providence and a 
prudent natural care, by winking when any- 
thing comes against them, and by turning aside 
when a blow is offered, they are preserved so 
certainly, that not one in ten thousand does by 
a stroke lose one of his eyes in all his lifetime. 
If we would transplant our natural care to a 
spiritual caution, we might by God's grace be 
kept from losing our souls, as we are from los- 
ing our eyes ; and because a perpetual watch- 
fulness is our great defence, and the perpetual 
presence of God's grace is our great security, 
and that this grace never leaves us unless we 
leave it, and the precept of a daily watchful- 
ness is a thing not only so reasonable, but so 
many easy ways to be performed, we see upon 



238 PITT. 

what terms we may be quit of our sins, and 
more than conquerors over all the enemies and 
impediments of salvation. 



PITY. 



TF you do but see a maiden carried to her 
-*- grave a little before her intended marriage, 
or an infant die before the birth of reason, na- 
ture hath taught us to pay a tributary tear. 
Alas ! your eyes will behold the ruin of many 
families, which, though they sadly have de- 
served, yet mercy is not delighted with the 
spectacle ; and therefore God places a watery 
cloud in the eye, that when the light of heaven 
shines upon it, it may produce a rainbow to be 
a sacrament and a memorial that God and the 
sons of God do not love to see a man perish. 
God never rejoices in the death of him that 
dies ; and we also esteem it undecent to have 
music at a funeral. And as religion teaches us 
to pity a condemned criminal, so mercy inter- 
cedes for the most benign interpretation of the 
laws. You must indeed be as just as the laws, 
and you must be as merciful as your religion ; 
and you have no way to tie these together but 
to follow the pattern in the mount : do as God 
does, who in judgment remembers mercy. 



THE HOPE OF MAN. 239 



THE HOPE OF MAN. 

rpRULY, what is the hope of man ? It is 
-*- indeed the resurrection of the soul in this 
world from sorrow and her saddest pressures, 
and like the twilight to the day, and the har- 
binger of joy ; but still it is but a conjugation 
of infirmities, and proclaims our present calam- 
ity ; only because it is uneasy here, it thrusts 
us forwards toward the light and glory of the 
resurrection. 

For as a worm, creeping with her belly on 
the ground, with her portion and share of 
Adam's curse, lifts up its head to partake a 
little of the blessings of the air, and opens the 
junctures of her imperfect body, and curls her 
little rings into knots and combinations, draw- 
ing up her tail to a neighborhood of the head's 
pleasure and motion ; but still it must return to 
abide the fate of its own nature, and dwell and 
sleep upon the dust : so are the hopes of a 
mortal man ; he opens his eyes and looks upon 
fine things at a distance, and shuts them again 
with weakness, because they are too glorious 
to behold; and the man rejoices because he 
hopes fine things are staying for him ; but his 
heart aches, because he knows there are a 
thousand ways to fail and miss of those glories ; 
and though he hopes, yet he enjoys not; he 



240 THE RESURRECTION. 

longs, but he possesses not ; and must be con- 
tent with his portion of dust, and being " a 
worm and no man," must lie down in this por- 
tion, before he can receive the end of his hopes, 
the salvation of his soul in the resurrection of 
the dead. For as death is the end of our lives, 
so is the resurrection the end of our hopes ; 
and as we die daily, so we daily hope. But 
death, which is the end of our life, is the en- 
largement of our spirits from hope to certainty, 
from uncertain fears to certain expectations, 
from the death of the body to the life of the 
soul. 



THE RESURRECTION. 

XIJTHEN man was n °t? what power, what 
' ' causes made him to be ? Whatsoever it 
was, it did then as great a work as to raise his 
body to the same being again ; and because 
we know not the method of nature's secret 
changes, and how we can be fashioned beneath 
" in secreto terrce" and cannot handle and dis- 
cern the possibilities and seminal powers in the 
ashes of dissolved bones, must our ignorance in 
philosophy be put in balance against the articles 
of religion, the hopes of mankind, the faith of 
nations, and the truth of God? And are our 
opinions of the power of God so low, that our 



THE RESURRECTION. 241 

understanding must be his measure, and he 
shall be confessed to do nothing unless it be 
made plain in our philosophy ? Certainly we 
have a low opinion of God unless we believe 
he can do more things than we can understand. 
But let us hear St. Paul's demonstration : if 
the corn dies and lives again ; if it lays its body 
down, suffers alteration, dissolution and death, 
but at the spring rises again in the verdure 
of a leaf, in the fulness of the ear, in the kid- 
neys of wheat ; if it proceeds from little to 
great, from nakedness to ornament, from emp- 
tiness to plenty, from unity to multitude, from 
death to life ; be a Sadducee no more, shame 
not thy understanding, and reproach not the 
weakness of thy faith, by thinking that corn 
can be restored to life, and man cannot; espe- 
cially since in every creature the obediential 
capacity is infinite, and cannot admit degrees ; 
for every creature can be anything under the 
power of God, which cannot be less than in- 
finite. 

But w^e find no obscure footsteps of this 
mystery even amongst the heathens. Pliny 
reports that Appion the grammarian, by the 
use of the plant Osiris, called Homer from his 
grave ; and in Valerius Maximus we find that 
jElius Tubero returned to life when he was 
seated in his funeral pile ; and in Plutarch, that 
Soleus, after three days' burial, did live ; and 
16 



242 THE RESURRECTION. 

in Valerius, that iEris Pamphilius did so after 
ten days. And it was so commonly believed 
that Glaucus, who was choked in a vessel of 
honey, did rise again, that it grew to a prov- 
erb; " Grlaucus poto melle surrexit" Glaucus 
having tasted honey, died and lived again. I 
pretend not to believe these stories to be true ; 
but from these instances it may be concluded, 
that they believed it possible that there should 
be a resurrection from the dead ; and natural 
reason and their philosophy did not wholly de- 
stroy their hopes and expectation to have a 
portion in this article. 

For God, knowing that the great hopes of 
man, that the biggest endearment of religion, 
the sanction of private justice, the band of piety 
and holy courage, does wholly derive from the 
article of the resurrection, was pleased not only 
to make it credible, but easy and familiar to 
us ; and we so converse every night with the 
image of death, that every morning we find an 
argument of the resurrection. Sleep and death 
have but one mother, and they have one name 
in common. 

Charnel-houses are but cemeteries or sleep- 
ing-places, and they that die are fallen asleep, 
and the resurrection is but an awakening and 
standing-up from sleep. But in sleep our sen- 
ses arc as fast bound by nature as our joints are 
by the grave-clothes ; and unless an angel of 



THE RESURRECTION. 243 

God awaken us every morning, we must con- 
fess ourselves as unable to converse with men 
as we now are afraid to die and to converse 
with spirits. 

I will not now insist upon the story of the 
rising bones seen every year in Egypt, nor the 
pretences of the chemists, that they from the 
ashes of flowers can reproduce from the same 
materials the same beauties in color and figure ; 
for he that proves a certain truth from an 
uncertain argument, is like him that wears a 
wooden leg when he hath two sound legs al- 
ready ; it hinders his going, but helps him 
not. The truth of God stands not in need of 
such supporters; nature alone is a sufficient 
preacher. Night and day, the sun returning 
to the same point of east, every change of 
species in the same matter, generation and 
corruption, the eagle renewing her youth and 
the snake her skin, the silk-worm and the 
swallows, the care of posterity and the care 
of an immortal name, winter and summer, the 
fall and spring, the Old Testament and the 
New, the words of Job and the visions of the 
Prophets, the prayer of Ezekiel for the resur- 
rection of the men of Ephraim and the return 
of Jonas from the whale's belly, the histories 
of the Jews and the narratives of Christians, 
the faith of believers and the philosophy of the 
reasonable, — all join in the verification of thi? 



244 RESURRECTION OF SINNERS. 

mystery. And amongst these heaps it is not 
of the least consideration that there was never 
any good man, who having been taught this 
article, but if he served God, he also relied 
upon this. If he believed God, he believed 
this. 



RESURRECTION OF SINNERS. 

OO have we seen a poor condemned criminal, 
^ the weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily 
upon his soul hath benumbed him into a deep 
sleep, till he hath forgotten his groans, and laid 
aside his deep sighings ; but on a sudden comes 
the messenger of death and unbinds the poppy 
garland, scatters the heavy cloud that encircled 
his miserable head, and makes him return to 
acts of life, that he may quickly descend into 
death and be no more. So is every sinner that 
lies down in shame and makes his grave with 
the wicked ; he shall indeed rise again and be 
called upon by the voice of the archangel ; but 
then he shall descend into sorrows greater than 
the reason and the patience of a man, weeping 
and shrieking louder than the groans of the 
miserable children in the valley of Hinnom. 



THE DIVINE BOUNTY. 245 



THE DIVINE BOUNTY. 

T^HAT our desires are so provided for by 
-*- nature and art, by ordinary and extraordi- 
nary, by foresight and contingency, according 
to necessity and up unto conveniency, until 
we arrive at abundance, is a chain of mercies 
larger than the bow in the clouds, and richer 
than the trees of Eden, which were permitted 
to feed our miserable father. Is not all the 
earth our orchard and our granary, our vine- 
yard and our garden of pleasure ? And the 
face of the sea is our traffic, and the bowels of 
the sea is our " vivarium" a place for fish to 
feed us, and to serve some other collateral ap- 
pendant needs ; and all the face of heaven is 
a repository for influences and breath, fruitful 
showers and fair refreshments. And when 
God made provision for his other creatures, 
he gave it of one kind, and with variety no 
greater than the changes of day and night, one 
devouring the other, or sitting down with his 
draught of blood, or walking upon his portion 
of grass. But man hath all the food of beasts, 
and all the beasts themselves that are fit for 
food, and the food of angels, and the dew of 
heaven, and the fatness of the earth ; and every 
part of his body hath a provision made for it. 
And the smoothness of the olive and the juice 



246 TEE DIVINE BOUNTY. 

of the vine refresh the heart, and make the face 
cheerful, and serve the ends of joy and the fes- 
tivity of man ; and are not only to cure hunger 
or to allay thirst, but appease a passion and 
allay a sorrow. It is an infinite variety of 
meat with which God furnishes out the table 
of mankind. And in the covering our sin and 
clothing our nakedness, God passed from fig- 
leaves to the skins of beasts, from aprons to 
long robes, from leather to wool, and from 
thence to the warmth of furs and the coolness 
of silks. He hath dressed not only our needs, 
but hath fitted the several portions of the year, 
and made us to go dressed like our mother, 
leaving off the winter sables when the florid 
spring appears, and as soon as the tulip fades 
we put on the robe of summer, and then shear 
our sheep for winter : and God uses us as Jo- 
seph did his brother Benjamin ; we have many 
changes of raiment, and our mess is five times 
bigger than the provision made for our brothers 
of the creation. 

But that which I shall observe in this whole 
affair is, that there are, both for the provision 
of our tables and the relief of our sicknesses, 
so many miracles of providence that they give 
plain demonstration what relation we bear to 
heaven. And the poor man peed not be troub- 
led that he is to expect his daily portion after 
the sun is up ; for he hath found to this day 



THE DIVINE BOUNTY. 247 

he was not deceived ; and then he may rejoice, 
because he sees, by an effective probation, that 
in heaven a decree was made, every day to send 
him provisions of meat and drink. And that is 
a mighty mercy, when the circles of heaven are 
bowed down to wrap us in a bosom of care and 
nourishment, and the wisdom of God is daily 
busied to serve his mercy, as his mercy serves 
our necessities. Does not God plant remedies 
there where the diseases are most popular ? 
And every country is best provided against its 
own evils. Is not the rhubarb found where the 
sun most corrupts the liver, and the scabious 
by the shore of the sea, that God might cure 
as soon as he wounds? And the inhabitants 
may see their remedy against the leprosy and 
the scurvy, before they feel their sickness. And 
then to this we may add nature's commons and 
open fields, the shores of rivers and the strand 
of the sea, the unconfined air, the wilderness 
that hath no hedge ; and that in these every 
man may hunt and fowl and fish respectively ; 
and that God sends some miracles and extraor- 
dinary blessings so for the public good, that he 
will not endure they should be enclosed and 
made several. Thus he is pleased to dispense 
the manna of Calabria, the medicinal waters of 
Germany, the muscles at Sluce at this day, 
and the Egyptian beans in the marshes of Al- 
bania, and the salt at Troas of old; which 



248 THE DIVINE BOUNTY. 

God, to defeat the covetousness of man, and 
to spread his mercy over the face of the indi- 
gent, as the sun scatters his beams over the 
bosom of the whole earth, did so order that, as 
long as every man was permitted to partake, 
the bosom of heaven was open ; but when man 
gathered them into single handfuls and made 
them impropriate, God gathered his hand into 
his bosom, and bound the heavens with ribs of 
brass, and the earth with decrees of iron, and 
the blessing reverted to him that gave it, since 
they might not receive it to whom it was sent. 
And in general, this is the excellency of this 
mercy that all our needs are certainly supplied 
and secured by a promise which God cannot 
break. But he that cannot break the laws of 
his own promises, can break the laws of nature 
that he may perform his promise, and he will 
do a miracle rather than forsake thee in thy 
needs : so that our security and the relative 
mercy is bound upon us by all the power and 
the truth of God. 

Temporal advantage is a great ingredient in 
the constitution of every Christian grace. For 
so the richest tissue dazzles the beholder's eye 
when the sun reflects upon the metal, the sil- 
ver and the gold weaved into fantastic imagery 
or a wealthy plainness ; but the rich wire and 
shining filaments are wrought upon cheaper 
silk, the spoil of worms and flics. So is the 



THE DIVINE BOUNTY. 249 

embroidery of our virtue. The glories of the 
spirit dwell upon the face and vestment, upon 
the fringes and the borders, and there we see 
the beryl and onyx, the jasper and the sar- 
donyx, order and perfection, love, and peace, 
and joy, mortification of the passions and rav- 
ishment of the will, adherences to God and 
imitation of Christ, reception and entertain- 
ment of the Holy Ghost, and longings after 
heaven, humility and chastity, temperance and 
sobriety. These make the frame of the gar- 
ment, the clothes of the soul, that it may " not 
be found naked in the day of the Lord's vis- 
itation." But through these rich materials a 
thread of silk is drawn, some compliance with 
worms and weaker creatures, something that 
shall please our bowels and make the lower 
man to rejoice ; they are wrought upon secular 
content and material satisfactions : and now we 
cannot be happy unless we be pious ; and the 
religion of a Christian is the greatest security, 
and the most certain instrument of making a 
man rich, and pleasing, and healthful, and wise, 
and beloved, in the whole world. 



250 RESTRAINT OF THE PASSIONS. 



SYMPATHY. 

A FRIEND shares my sorrow, and makes it 
■*■•*- but a moiety ; but he swells my joy, and 
makes it double. For so two channels divide 
the river, and lessen it into rivulets, and make 
it fordable, and apt to be drunk up at the first 
revels of the Sirian star ; but two torches do 
not divide, but increase the flame : and though 
my tears are the sooner dried up when they 
run upon my Mend's cheeks in the furrows of 
compassion, yet when my flame hath kindled 
his lamp, we unite the glories and make them 
radiant, like the golden candlesticks that burn 
before the throne of God, because they shine 
by numbers, by unions, and confederations of 
light and joy. 



RESTRAINT OF THE PASSIONS. 

CO have I seen a busy flame, sitting upon a 
^ sullen coal, turn its point to all the angles 
and portions of its neighborhood, and reach at 
a heap of prepared straw, which, like a bold 
temptation, called it to a restless motion and 
activity ; but either it was at too big a distance, 
or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the 



RESTRAINT OF THE PASSIONS. 251 

sphere and the ray of the fire to the other side, 
and so prevented the violence of the burning, 
till the flame expired in a weak consumption, 
and died turning into smoke, and the coolness 
of death, and the harmlessness of a cinder. 
And when a man's desires are winged with 
sails and a lusty wind of passion, and pass on 
in a smooth channel of opportunity, God often- 
times hinders the lust and the impatient desire 
from passing on to its port and entering into 
action, by a sudden thought, by a little remem- 
brance of a word, by a fancy, by a sudden dis- 
ability, by unreasonable and unlikely fears, by 
the sudden intervening of company, by the very- 
weariness of the passion, by curiosity, by want 
of health, by the too great violence of the desire, 
bursting itself with its fulness into dissolution 
and a remiss easiness, by a sentence of Scrip- 
ture, by the reverence of a good man, or else 
by the proper interventions of the spirit of grace 
chastising the crime, and representing its ap- 
pendant mischiefs, and its constituent disorder 
and irregularity : and after all this, the very 
anguish and trouble of being defeated in the 
purpose hath rolled itself into so much uneasi- 
ness and unquiet reflections, that the man is 
grown ashamed and vexed into more sober 
counsels. 



252 THE SOULS MEMORY. 



THE SOUL'S MEMORY. 

f^ OD will restore the soul to the body, and 
^ raise the body to such a perfection that it 
shall be an organ fit to praise him upon ; it 
shall be made spiritual to minister to the soul, 
when the soul is turned into a spirit ; then the 
soul shall be brought forth by angels from her 
incomparable and easy bed, from her rest in 
Christ's holy bosom, and be made perfect in 
her being, and in all her operations. And this 
shall first appear by that perfection which the 
soul shall receive as instrumental to the last 
judgment; for then she shall see clearly all the 
records of this world, all the register of her 
own memory. For all that we did in this life 
is laid up in our memories ; and though dust 
and forgetfulness be drawn upon them, yet 
when God shall lift us from our dust, then shall 
appear clearly all that we have done, written 
in the tables of our conscience, which is the 
soul's memory. We see many times, and in 
many instances, that a great memory is hin- 
dered and put out, and we thirty years after 
come to think of something that lay so long 
under a curtain ; we think of it suddenly, and 
without a line of deduction or proper conse- 
quence. And all those famous memories of 
Simonides and Thcodectes, of Ilortensius and 



FEMALE PIETY. 253 

Seneca, of Sceptius, Metrodorus, and Carnea- 
des, of Cyneas the ambassador of Pyrrhus, are 
only tlie records better kept, and less disturbed 
by accident and disease. For even the memory 
of Herod's son, of Athens, of Bathyllus, and 
the dullest person now alive, is so great, and by 
God made so sure a record of all that ever he 
did, that as soon as ever God shall but tune our 
instrument, and draw the curtains, and but 
light up the candle of immortality, there we 
shall find it all, there we shall see all, and the 
whole world shall see all. Then we shall be 
made fit to converse with God after the man- 
ner of spirits ; we shall be like to angels. 



FEMALE PIETY. 

I" HAVE seen a female religion that wholly 
-*- dwelt upon the face and tongue ; that, like 
a wanton and an undressed tree, spends all its 
juice in suckers and irregular branches, in 
leaves and gum ; and after all such goodly out- 
sides, you should never eat an apple, or be 
delighted with the beauties or the perfumes of 
a hopeful blossom. But the religion of this 
excellent lady was of another constitution ; it 
took root downward in humility, and brought 
forth fruit upward in the substantial graces of 
a Christian, in charity and justice, in chastity 



254 FEMALE PIETY. 

and modesty, in fair friendships and sweetness 
of society. She had not very much of the 
forms and outsides of godliness, but she was 
hugely careful for the power of it, for the 
moral, essential, and useful parts, such which 
would make her be, not seem to be, religious. 

In all her religion, in all her actions of rela- 
tion towards God, she had a strange evenness 
and untroubled passage, sliding toward her 
ocean of God and of infinity with a certain and 
silent motion. So have I seen a river deep 
and smooth passing with a still foot and a sober 
face, and paying to the "fiscus" the great ex- 
chequer of the sea, the prince of all the watery 
bodies, a tribute large and full ; and hard by it 
a little brook skipping and making a noise upon 
its unequal and neighbor bottom ; and after all 
its talking and braggart motion, it paid to its 
common audit no more than the revenues of a 
little cloud, or a contemptible vessel. So have 
I sometimes compared the issues of her religion 
to the solemnities and famed outsides of an- 
other's piety. It dwelt upon her spirit, and 
was incorporated with the periodical work of 
every day: she did not believe that religion 
was intended to minister to fame and reputa- 
tion, but to pardon of sins, to the pleasure of 
God, and the salvation of souls. For religion 
is like the breath of heaven: if it goes abroad 
into the open air, it scatters and dissolves like 



FEMALE PIETY. 255 

camphor ; but if it enters into a secret hollow- 
ness, into a close conveyance, it is strong and 
mighty, and comes forth with vigor and great 
effect at the other end, at the other side of this 
life, in the days of death and judgment. 

The other appendage of her religion, which 
also was a great ornament to all the parts of 
her life, was a rare modesty and humility of 
spirit, a confident despising and undervaluing 
of herself. For though she had the greatest 
judgment, and the greatest experience of things 
and persons that I ever yet knew in a person 
of her youth and sex and circumstances, yet, 
as if she knew nothing of it, she had the mean- 
est opinion of herself; and like a fair taper, 
when she shined to all the room, yet round 
about her own station she had cast a shadow 
and a cloud, and she shined to everybody but 
herself. But the perfectness of her prudence 
and excellent parts could not be hid; and all 
her humility and arts of concealment made 
the virtues more amiable and illustrious. For 
as pride sullies the beauty of the fairest virtues 
and makes our understanding but like the craft 
and learning of a devil, so humility is the 
greatest eminency and art of publication in the 
whole world ; and she, in all her arts of secrecy 
and hiding her worthy things, was but " like 
one that hideth the wind, and covers the oint- 
ment of her right hand." 



256 FEMALE PIETY, 

She lived as we all should live, and she died 
as I fain would die. I pray God I may feel 
those mercies on my death-bed that she felt, 
and that I may feel the same effect of my re- 
pentance which she feels of the many degrees 
of her innocence. Such was her death, that 
she did not die too soon ; and her life was so 
useful and excellent, that she could not have 
lived too long. And as now in the grave it 
shall not be inquired concerning her, how long 
she lived, but how well, so to us who live after 
her, to suffer a longer calamity, it may be some 
ease to our sorrows, and some guide to our 
lives, and some security to our conditions, to 
consider that God hath brought the piety of a 
young lady to the early rewards of a never- 
ceasing and never-dying eternity of glory : and 
we also, if we live as she did, shall partake of 
the same glories ; not only having the honor 
of a good name, and a dear and honored mem- 
ory, but the glories of these glories, the end 
of all excellent labors and all prudent coun- 
sels and all holy religion, even the salvation 
of our souls, in that day when all the saints, 
and among them this excellent woman, shall 
be shown to all the world to have done more, 
and more excellent things, than we know of or 
can describe. Death consecrates and makes 
sacred that person whose excellency was such 
that they that are not displeased at the death 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 257 

cannot dispraise the life ; but they that mourn 
sadly, think they can never commend suffi- 
ciently. 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

A MAN is a bubble," said the Greek proverb ; 
-*•-*- which Lucian represents with advantages, 
and its proper circumstances, to this purpose, 
saying : All the world is a storm, and men rise 
up in their several generations like bubbles de- 
scending " d Jove pluvio" from God and the 
dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of rain, 
from nature and providence ; and some of these 
instantly sink into the deluge of their first par- 
ent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, hav- 
ing had no other business in the world but to 
be born, that they might be able to die ; others 
float up and down two or three turns, and sud- 
denly disappear and give their place to others ; 
and they that live longest upon the face of the 
waters are in perpetual motion, restless and 
uneasy, and being crushed with a great drop 
of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth ; the 
change not being great, it being hardly pos- 
sible it should be more a nothing than it was 
before. 

So is every man : he is born in vanity and 

17 



258 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

sin ; he comes into the world like morning 
mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into 
the air, and conversing with their kindred of 
the same production, and as soon they turn 
unto dust and forgetfulness ; some of them 
without any other interest in the affairs of the 
world, but that they made their parents a little 
glad and very sorrowful ; others ride longer in 
the storm, it may be until seven years of van- 
ity be expired, and then peradventure the sun 
shines hot upon their heads, and they fall into 
the shades below, into the cover of death and 
darkness of the grave to hide them. But if 
the bubble stands the shock of a bigger drop 
and outlives the chances of a child, of a care- 
less nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of 
being overlaid by a sleepy servant, or such 
little accidents, then the young man dances 
like a bubble empty and gay, and shines like a 
dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which 
hath no substance, and whose very imagery 
and colors are fantastical; and so he dances 
out the gayety of his youth, and is all the 
while in a storm, and endures only because 
he is not knocked on the head by a drop of 
bigger rain, or crushed by the pressure of a 
load of indigested meat, or quenched by the 
disorder of an ill-placed humor; and to pre- 
serve a man alive, in the midst of so many 
chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as 



TEE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 259 

to create him; to preserve him from rushing 
into nothing, and at first to draw him up from 
nothing, were equally the issues of an almighty- 
power. 

And therefore the wise men of the world 
have contended who shall best fit man's con- 
dition with words signifying his vanity and 
short abode. Homer calls a man "a leaf," the 
smallest, the weakest piece of a short-lived, 
unsteady plant. Pindar calls him " the dream 
of a shadow " ; another, " the dream of a shad- 
ow of smoke." But St. James spake by a 
more excellent spirit, saying, " Our life is but 
a vapor," drawn from the earth by a celestial 
influence, made of smoke, or the fighter parts 
of water, tossed with every wind, moved by 
the motion of a superior body, without virtue 
in itself, lifted up on high or left below, accord- 
ing as it pleases the sun, its foster-father. But 
it is lighter yet. It is but " appearing " ; a 
fantastic vapor, an apparition, nothing real ; it 
is not so much as a mist, not the matter of 
a shower, nor substantial enough to make a 
cloud ; but it is like Cassiopeia's chair, or 
Pelops's shoulder, or the circles of heaven, " ap- 
pearing," for which you cannot have a word 
that can signify a verier nothing. 

And yet the expression is one degree more 
made diminutive ; a vapor, and fantastical, or 
a mere appearance, and this but " for a little 



2 GO THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

while n neither: the very dream, the phantasm 
disappears in a small time, "like the shadow 
that departeth, or like a tale that is told, or as 
a dream when one awaketh." A man is so 
vain, so unfixed, so perishing a creature, that 
he cannot long last in the scene of fancy ; a 
man goes off and is forgotten like the dream 
of a distracted person. The sum of all is this: 
that thou art a man, than whom there is not in 
the world any greater instance of heights and 
declensions, of lights and shadows, of misery 
and folly, of laughter and tears, of groans and 
death. 

And because this consideration is of great 
usefulness and great necessity to many pur- 
poses of wisdom and the spirit, all the succession 
of time, all the changes in nature, all the vari- 
eties of light and darkness, the thousand thou- 
sands of accidents in the world, and every con- 
tingency to every man and to every creature 
doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to 
look and see how the old sexton, Time, throws 
up the earth and digs a grave where we must 
lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, 
till they rise again in a fair or in an intoler- 
able eternity. Every revolution which the sun 
makes about the world divides between life 
and death ; and death possesses both those 
portions by the next morrow; and we are 
dead to all those months which we have al- 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 261 

ready lived, and we shall never live them 
over again ; and still God makes little periods 
of our age. 

First we change our world when we are 
born and feel the warmth of the sun. Then 
we sleep and enter into the image of death, in 
which state we are unconcerned in all the 
changes of the world ; and if our mothers or 
our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy our vine- 
yards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, 
but during that state are as disinterested as if 
our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps 
in the bowels of the earth. At the end of 
seven years our teeth fall and die before us, 
representing a formal prologue to a tragedy ; 
and still every seven years it is odd but we 
shall finish the last scene ; and when nature, 
or chance, or vice takes our body in pieces, 
weakening some parts and loosening others, we 
taste the grave, and the solemnities of our own 
funerals, first, in those parts that ministered to 
vice, and next, in them that served for orna- 
ment; and in a short time even they that 
served for necessity become useless and en- 
tangled like the wheels of a broken clock. 

Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, 
the proper ornament of mourning, and of a 
person entered very far into the regions and 
possession of death ; and we have many more 
of the same signification ; gray hairs, rotten 



262 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, 
stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, de- 
cayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls 
for a reparation of that portion which death 
fed on all night, when we lay in his lap and 
slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits 
of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread 
and flesh, and every meal is a rescue from one 
death, and lays up for another ; and while we 
think a thought we die ; and the clock strikes, 
and reckons on our portion of eternity ; we 
form our words with the breath of our nostrils ; 
we have the less to live upon for every word 
we speak. 

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by 
those things which are the instruments of act- 
ing it ; and God, by all the variety of his prov- 
idence, makes us see death everywhere, in all 
variety of circumstances, and dressed up for 
all the fancies and the expectation of every 
single person. Nature hath given us one har- 
vest every year, but death hath two ; and the 
spring and the autumn send throngs of men 
and women to charnel-houses ; and all the 
summer long, men are recovering from the 
evils of the spring, till the dog-days come and 
the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and 
the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the 
year's provision, and the man that gathers 
them eats and surfeits and dies, and needs 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 268 

them not, and himself is laid up for eternity ; 
and he that escapes till winter, only stays for 
another opportunity, which the distempers of 
that quarter minister to him with great variety. 
Thus death reigns in all the portions of our 
time. The autumn with its fruits provides dis- 
orders for us, and the winter's cold turns them 
into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flow- 
ers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives 
green turf and brambles to bind upon our 
graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, 
are the four quarters of the year, and all minis- 
ter to death ; and you can go no whither but 
you tread upon a dead man's bones. 

The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped 
upon a broken table from the furies of a ship- 
wreck, as he was sunning himself upon the 
rocky shore espied a man rolling upon his 
floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in 
the folds of his garment, and carried by his 
civil enemy, the sea, towards the shore to 
find a grave ; and it cast him into some sad 
thoughts : that peradventure this man's wife 
in some part of the continent, safe and warm, 
looks next month for the good man's return ; 
or it may be his son knows nothing of the tem- 
pest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate 
kiss, which still is warm upon the good old 
man's cheek, ever since he took a kind fare- 
well, and he weeps with joy to think how 



264 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

blessed he shall be when his beloved boy 
returns into the circle of his father's arms. 
These are the thoughts of mortals, this the 
end and sum of all their designs ; a dark 
night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a 
broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, 
dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family ; 
and they that shall weep loudest for the acci- 
dent are not yet entered into the storm, and 
yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking 
upon the carcass, he knew it, and found it to 
be the master of the ship, who the day before 
cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his 
trade, and named the day when he thought to 
be at home. See how the man swims who 
was so angry two days since ; his passions are 
becalmed by the storm, his accounts are cast 
up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, 
and his gains are the strange events of death, 
which, whether they be good or evil, the men 
that are alive seldom trouble themselves con- 
cerning the interest of the dead. 

But seas alone do not break our vessel in 
pieces ; everywhere we may be shipwrecked. 
A valiant general, when he is to reap the har- 
vest of his crowns and triumphs, fights unpros- 
perously, or falls into a fever with joy and 
wine, and changes his laurel into cypress, his 
triumphant chariot to a hearse ; dying the 
night before he was appointed to perish in 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 265 

the drunkenness of his festival joys. It was 
a sad arrest of the loosenesses and wilder feasts 
of the French court, when their king, Henry 
the Second, was killed really by the sportive 
image of a fight. And many brides have died 
under the hands of paranymphs and maidens, 
dressing them for the new and undiscerned 
chains of marriage. Some have been paying 
their vows, and giving thanks for a prosperous 
return to their own house, and the roof hath 
descended upon their heads, and turned their 
loud religion into the deeper silence of a grave. 
And how many teeming mothers have rejoiced, 
and pleased themselves in becoming channels 
of blessing to a family ; and the midwife hath 
quickly bound their heads and feet, and car- 
ried them forth to burial. Or else the birth- 
day of an heir hath seen the coffin of the father 
brought into the house, and the divided mother 
hath been forced to travail twice, with a pain- 
ful birth, and a sadder death. 

There is no state, no accident, no circum- 
stance of our life but it hath been soured by 
some sad instance of a dying friend ; a friendly 
meeting often ends in some sad mischance and 
makes an eternal parting ; and when the poet 
JEschylus was sitting under the walls of his 
house, an eagle hovering over his bald head 
mistook it for a stone, and let fall his oyster, 
hoping there to break the shell, but pierced the 
poor man's skull. 



266 TEE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

Death meets us everywhere, and is pro- 
cured by every instrument, and in all chances, 
and enters in at many doors ; by violence and 
secret influence, by the aspect of a star and the 
scent of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and 
the meeting of a vapor, by the fall of a chariot 
and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or 
an empty stomach, by watching at the wine 
or by watching at prayers, by the sun or the 
moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or 
sleeping days, by water frozen into the hardness 
and sharpness of a dagger, or water thawed 
into the floods of a river, by a hair or a raisin, 
by violent motion or sitting still, by severity or 
dissolution, by God's mercy or God's anger, by 
everything in providence and everything in 
manners, by everything in nature and by 
everything in chance. " Eripitur persona, 
manet res" ; we take pains to heap up things 
useful to our life, and get our death in the 
purchase ; and the person is snatched away, 
and the goods remain. And all this is the 
law and constitution of nature ; it is a punish- 
ment to our sins, the unalterable event of 
providence, and the decree of heaven. The 
chains that confine us to this condition are 
strong as destiny and immutable as the eternal 
laws of God. 

I have conversed with some men who re- 
joiced in the death or calamity of others, and 



TEE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 267 

accounted it as a judgment upon them for being 
on the other side and against them in the con- 
tention; but within the revolution of a few 
months, the same man met with a more un- 
easy and unhandsome death; which, when I 
saw, I wept and was afraid ; for I knew it' 
must be so with all men, for we also shall 
die, and end our quarrels and contentions by 
passing to a final sentence. 

It is a mighty change that is made by the 
death of every person, and it is visible to us 
who are alive. Reckon but from the spright- 
fulness of youth and the fair cheeks and the 
full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness 
and strong flexure of the joints of five-and- 
twenty to the hollowness and dead paleness, 
to the loathsomeness and horror of a three 
days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance 
to be very great and very strange. But so 
have I seen a rose newly springing from the 
clefts of its hood, and at first it was as fair as 
the morning, and full with the dew of heaven 
as a lamb's fleece ; but when a ruder breath 
had forced open its virgin modesty and dis- 
mantled its too youthful and unripe retire- 
ments, it began to put on darkness and to 
decline to softness and the symptoms of a 
sickly age ; it bowed the head and broke its 
stalk, and at night, having lost some of its 
leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion 
of weeds and outworn faces. 



268 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

The same is the portion of every man and 
every woman ; the heritage of worms and ser- 
pents, rottenness and cold dishonor, and our 
beauty so changed that our acquaintance quick- 
ly know us not ; and that change mingled with 
so much horror, or else meets so with our fears 
and weak discoursings, that they who six hours 
ago tended upon us, either with charitable or 
ambitious services, cannot without some regret 
stay in the room alone where the body lies 
stripped of its life and honor. I have read of 
a fair young German gentleman, who, living, 
often refused to be pictured, but put off the 
importunity of his friends' desire by giving 
way that after a few days' burial they might 
send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw 
cause for it, draw the image of his death unto 
the life. They did so, and found his face half 
eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of ser- 
pents ; and so he stands pictured amongst his 
armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty 
change ; and it will be as bad with you and 
me ; and then what servants shall we have to 
wait upon us in the grave ? what friends to 
visit us ? what officious people to cleanse away 
the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected 
upon our faces from the sides of the weeping 
vaults, which are the longest weepers for our 
funeral ? 

A man may read a sermon, the best and 



THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 269 

most passionate that ever man preached, if he 
shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. 
In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes 
live in greatness and power, and decree war 
or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, 
where their ashes and their glory shall sleep 
till time shall be no more ; and where our 
kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie 
interred, and they must walk over their grand- 
sire's head to take his crown. There is an 
acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the 
greatest change, from rich to naked, from 
ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like 
gods to die like men. There is enough to cool 
the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, 
to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully 
and dash out the dissembling colors of a lustful, 
artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the 
warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the 
miserable, the beloved and the despised princes 
mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol 
of mortality, and tell all the world that, when 
we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and 
our accounts easier, and our pains for our 
crowns shall be less. 

Let no man extend his thoughts, or let his 
hopes wander towards future and far-distant 
events and accidental contingencies. This day 
is mine and yours, but ye know not what shall 
be on the morrow : and every morning creeps 



270 THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE. 

out of a dark cloud, leaving behind it an igno- 
rance and silence deep as midnight, and undis- 
cerned as are the phantasms that make a chris- 
om child to smile ; so that we cannot discern 
what comes hereafter, unless we had a light 
from heaven brighter than the vision of an 
angel, even the spirit of prophecy. Without 
revelation we cannot tell whether we shall eat 
to-morrow, or whether a squinancy shall choke 
us ; and it is written in the unrevealed folds of 
divine predestination, that many who are this 
day alive shall to-morrow be laid upon the cold 
earth, and the women shall weep over their 
shroud, and dress them for their funeral. 

This descending to the grave is the lot of 
all men ; neither doth God respect the person 
of any man. The rich is not protected for 
favor, nor the poor for pity ; the old man is not 
reverenced for his age, nor the infant regarded 
for his tenderness ; youth and beauty, learn- 
ing and prudence, wit and strength lie down 
equally in the dishonors of the grave. All 
men, and all natures, and all persons resist the 
addresses and solemnities of death, and strive 
to preserve a miserable and unpleasant life ; 
and yet they all sink down and die. For so 
have I seen the pillars of a building assisted 
with artificial props bending under the pres- 
sure of a roof, and pertinaciously resisting the 
infallible and prepared ruin, till the determined 



THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 271 

day comes, and then the burden sunk upon the 
pillars, and disordered the aids and auxiliary 
rafters into a common ruin and a ruder grave. 
So are the desires and weak arts of man ; with 
little aids and assistances of care and physic we 
strive to support our decaying bodies, and to 
put off the evil day ; but quickly that day will 
come, and then neither angels nor men can 
rescue us from our grave ; but the roof sinks 
down upon the walls, and the walls descend to 
the foundation ; and the beauty of the face 
and the dishonors of the belly, the discerning 
head and the servile feet, the thinking heart 
and the working hand, the eyes and the guts 
together shall be crushed into the confusion of 
a heap, and dwell with creatures of an equivo- 
cal production, with worms and serpents, the 
sons and daughters of our own bones, in a 
house of dirt and darkness. 



THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 

TTOW few men in the world are prosperous ! 
XX What an infinite number of slaves and 
beggars, of persecuted and oppressed people, 
fill all corners of the earth with groans, and 
heaven itself with weeping, prayers, and sad 
remembrances ! How many provinces and king- 



272 THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 

doms are afflicted by a violent war, or made 
desolate by popular diseases ! Some whole 
countries are remarked with fatal evils, or 
periodical sicknesses. Grand Cairo in Egypt 
feels the plague every three years returning 
like a quartan ague, and destroying many thou- 
sands of persons. All the inhabitants of Arabia 
the Desert are in continual fear of being buried 
in huge heaps of sand ; and therefore dwell in 
tents and ambulatory houses, or retire to un- 
fruitful mountains, to prolong an uneasy and 
wilder life. And all the countries round about 
the Adriatic Sea feel such violent convulsions 
by tempests and intolerable earthquakes, that 
sometimes whole cities find a tomb, and every 
man sinks with his own house made ready to 
become his monument, and his bed is crushed 
into the disorders of a grave. 

Or if you please in charity to visit an hospi- 
tal, which is indeed a map of the whole world, 
there you shall see the effects of Adam's sin, 
and the ruins of human nature ; bodies laid up 
in heaps, like the bones of a destroyed town ; 
men whose souls seem to be borrowed, and 
are kept there by art and the force of medi- 
cine, whose miseries are so great that few 
people have charity or humanity enough to 
visit them, fewer have the heart to dress them ; 
and we pity them in civility or with a transient 
prayer, bat we do not feel their sorrows by the 



THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 273 

mercies of a religious pity ; and therefore, as 
we leave their sorrows in many degrees unre- 
lieved and uneased, so we contract, by our 
unmercifulness, a guilt by which ourselves be- 
come liable to the same calamities. Those 
many that need pity, and those infinities of 
people that refuse to pity, are miserable upon a 
several charge, but yet they almost make up 
all mankind. 

But these evils are notorious and confessed ; 
even they also whose felicity men stare at and 
admire, besides their splendor and the sharp- 
ness of their light, will, with their appendant 
sorrows, wring a tear from the most resolved 
eye : for not only the winter quarter is full of 
storms and cold and darkness, but the beaute- 
ous spring hath blasts and sharp frosts; the 
fruitful teeming summer is melted with heat, 
and burnt with the kisses of the sun, her friend, 
and choked with dust ; and the rich autumn 
is full of sickness ; and we are weary of that 
which we enjoy, because sorrow is its bigger 
portion. For look upon kings and conquerors. 
I will not tell that many of them fall into the 
condition of servants, and their subjects rule 
over them, and stand upon the ruins of their 
families, and that to such persons the sorrow 
is bigger than usually happens in smaller for- 
tunes. But let us suppose them still conquer- 
ors, and see what a goodly purchase they get 
18 



274 TEE MISERIES OF LIFE. 

by all their pains, and amazing fears, and con- 
tinual dangers. They carry their arms beyond 
Ister, and pass the Euphrates, and bind the 
Germans with the bounds of the river Rhine : 
I speak in the style of the Roman greatness ; 
for nowadays the biggest fortune swells not 
beyond the limits of a petty province or two, 
and a hill confines the progress of their pros- 
perity, or a river checks it. But whatsoever 
tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious per- 
sons, is not so big as the smallest star which 
we see scattered in disorder and unregarded 
upon the pavement and floor of heaven. And 
if we would suppose the pismires had but our 
understanding, they also would have the meth- 
od of a man's greatness, and divide their little 
molehills into provinces and exarchates ; and if 
they also grew as vicious and as miserable, one 
of their princes would lead an army out, and 
kill his neighbor-ants, that he might reign over 
the next handful of a turf. But then if we 
consider at what price and with what felicity all 
this is purchased, the sting of the painted snake 
will quickly appear, and the fairest of their 
fortunes will properly enter into this account 
of human infelicities. 

We must look for prosperity, not in palaces 
or courts of princes, not in the tents of con- 
querors, or in the gayeties of fortunate and 
prevailing sinners ; but something rather in 



THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 275 

the cottages of honest, innocent, and contented 
persons, whose mind is no bigger than their for- 
tune, nor their virtue less than their security. 
As for others, whose fortune looks bigger, and 
allures fools to follow it, like the wandering 
fires of the night, till they run into rivers, or 
are broken upon rocks with staring and run- 
ning after them, they are all in the condition of 
Marius, than whose condition nothing was more 
constant, and nothing more mutable. If we 
reckon them amongst the happy, they are the 
most happy men ; if w^e reckon them amongst 
the miserable, they are the most miserable. 
For just as is a man's condition, great or little, 
so is the state of his misery. All have their 
share ; but kings and princes, great generals 
and consuls, rich men and mighty, as they 
have the biggest business and the biggest 
charge, and are answerable to God for the 
greatest accounts, so they have the biggest 
trouble ; that the uneasiness of their appen- 
dage may divide the good and evil of the 
world, making the poor man's fortune as eli- 
gible as the greatest ; and also restraining the 
vanity of man's spirit, which a great fortune is 
apt to swell from a vapor to a bubble : but 
God in mercy hath mingled wormwood with 
their wine, and so restrained the drunkenness 
and follies of prosperity. 

He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, 



276 THE MISERIES OF LIFE. 

if lie be in love with this world, we need not 
despair but that a witty man might reconcile 
him with tortures, and make him think chari- 
tably of the rack, and be brought to dwell w r ith 
vipers and dragons, and entertain his guests 
with the shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and 
screech-owls, with the filing of iron, and the 
harshness of rending silk, or to admire the 
harmony that is made by a herd of evening 
wolves, when they miss their draught of blood 
in their midnight revels. The groans of a man 
in a fit of the stone are worse than all these ; 
and the distractions of a troubled conscience 
are worse than those groans : and yet a care- 
less merry sinner is worse than all that. 

But if w r e could from one of the battlements 
of heaven espy how many men and women at 
this time lie fainting and dying for want of 
bread, how many young men are hewn down 
by the sword of war, how many poor orphans 
are now weeping over the graves of their 
father, by whose life they were enabled to 
eat ; if we could but hear how many mariners 
and passengers are at this present in a storm, 
and shriek out because their keel dashes against 
a rock or bulges under them, how many peo- 
ple there are that weep with want and are 
mad with oppression, or are desperate by too 
quick a sense of a constant infelicity ; in all 
reason we should be glad to be out of the noise 



REASON AND DISCRETION 277 

and participation of so many evils. This is a 
place of sorrows and tears, of great evils and a 
constant calamity : let us remove from hence, 
at least in affections and preparation of mind. 



REASON AND DISCRETION. 

TT7E must not think that the life of a man 
* " begins when he can feed himself or walk 
alone, when he can fight or beget his like ; for 
so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow : 
but he is first a man, when he comes to a cer- 
tain steady use of reason, according to his pro- 
portion ; and when that is, all the world of men 
cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at 
fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never ; 
but all men late enough, for the life of a man 
comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as 
when the sun approaching towards the gates 
of the morning, he first opens a little eye of 
heaven and sends away the spirits of darkness, 
and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark 
to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a 
cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrust- 
ing out his golden horns, like those which 
decked the brows of Moses when he was forced 
to wear a veil, because himself had seen the 
face of God ; and still while a man tells the 



278 REASON AND DISCRETION. 

story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a 
fair face and a full light, and then he shines 
one whole day, under a cloud often, and some- 
times weeping great and little showers, and sets 
quickly : so is a man's reason and his life. He 
first begins to perceive himself to see or taste, 
making little reflections upon his actions of 
sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells 
and play, horses and liberty : but when he is 
strong enough to enter into arts and little insti- 
tutions, he is at first entertained with trifles 
and impertinent things, not because he needs 
them, but because his understanding is no big- 
ger, and little images of things are laid before 
him, like a cockboat to a whale, only to play 
withal : but before a man comes to be wise, he 
is half dead with gouts and consumption, with 
catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn- 
out body. So that if we must not reckon the 
life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, 
he is long before his soul be dressed ; and he is 
not to be called a man without a wise and an 
adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with 
what is necessary towards his well-being. But 
by the time his soul is thus furnished, his body 
is decayed ; Mid then you can hardly reckon 
him to be alive, when his body is possessed by 
bo many degrees of death. 

Bat there is vet another arrest. At first he 
wants strength of body, and then he wants the 



REASON AND DISCRETION. 279 

use of reason ; and when that is come, it is ten 
to one but he stops by the impediments of vice, 
and wants the strength of the spirit ; and we 
know that body and soul and spirit are the 
constituent parts of every Christian man. And 
now let us consider what that thing is which 
we call years of discretion. The young man 
is past his tutors, and arrived at the bondage 
of a caitiff spirit ; he is run from discipline, 
and is let loose to passion ; the man by this 
time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act 
his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confi- 
dently and ignorantly and perpetually, to de- 
spise his betters, to deny nothing to his appe- 
tite, to do things that, when he is indeed a 
man, he must forever be ashamed of. For this 
is all the discretion that most men show in the 
first stage of their manhood ; they can discern 
good from evil ; and they prove their skill by 
leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the 
evils of folly and an unbridled appetite. And 
by this time the young man hath contracted 
vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and 
therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the be- 
ginning of his life ; he is a fool in his under- 
standing, and that is a sad death ; and he is 
dead in trespasses and sins, and that is a sad- 
der : so that he hath no life but a natural, the 
life of a beast or a tree ; in all other capacities 
he is dead ; he neither hath the intellectual nor 



280 CHARITY. 

the spiritual life, neither the life of a man nor 
of a Christian ; and this sad truth lasts too long. 
For old age seizes upon most men while they 
still retain the minds of boys and vicious youth, 
doing actions from principles of great folly and 
a mighty ignorance, admiring things useless 
and hurtful, and filling up all the dimensions 
of their abode with businesses of empty affairs, 
being at leisure to attend no virtue. They can- 
not pray, because they are busy and because 
they are passionate ; they cannot communi- 
cate, because they have quarrels and intrigues 
of perplexed causes, complicated hostilities, and 
things of the world ; and therefore they can- 
not attend to the things of God, little consider- 
ing that they must find a time to die in ; when 
death comes, they must be at leisure for that. 
Such men are like sailors loosing from a port, 
and tost immediately with a perpetual tempest 
lasting till their cordage crack, and either they 
sink or return back again to the same place : 
they did not make a voyage, though they were 
long at sea. 



CHARITY. 

/CHARITY, with its twin-daughters, alms 
^ and forgiveness, is especially effectual for 



CHARITY. 281 

the procuring God's mercies in the day and 
the manner of our death. Repentance with- 
out alms is dead and without wings, and can 
never soar upwards to the element of love. 
A long experience hath observed God's mer- 
cies to descend upon charitable people, like 
the dew upon Gideon's fleece, when all the 
world was dry. When faith fails, and chas- 
tity is useless, and temperance shall be no 
more, then charity shall bear you upon wings 
of cherubim to the eternal mountain of the 
Lord. 

I do not mean this should only be a death- 
bed charity, any more than a death-bed repent- 
ance ; but it ought to be the charity of our 
life and healthful years, a parting with portions 
of our goods then when we can keep them. 
We must not first kindle our lights when we 
are to descend into our houses of darkness, or 
bring a glaring torch suddenly to a dark room 
that will amaze the eye and not delight it, or 
instruct the body ; but if our tapers have, in 
their constant course, descended into their 
grave, crowned all the way with light, then 
let the death-bed charity be doubled, and the 
light burn brightest when it is to deck our 
hearse. 



282 IMMODERATE GRIEF. 



TIME. 

TT is very remarkable that God who giveth 
■*• plenteously to all creatures, — he hath scat- 
tered the firmament with stars, as a man sows 
corn in his fields, in a multitude bigger than 
the capacities of human order ; he hath made so 
much variety of creatures, and gives us great 
choice of meats and drinks, although any one 
of both kinds would have served our needs ; 
and so in all instances of nature, — yet in the 
distribution of our time, God seems to be 
straight-handed ; and gives it to us, not as 
nature gives us rivers, enough to drown us, 
but drop by drop, minute after minute ; so that 
we never can have two minutes together, but 
he takes away one when he gives us another. 
This should teach us to value our time since 
God so values it, and by his so small distribu- 
tion of it tells us it is the most precious thing 
we have. 



IMMODERATE GRIEF. 

O OLEMN and appointed mournings are good 
^ expressions of our clearness to the departed 

soul, and of his worth and our value of him ; 
and it hath its praise in nature and in man- 



IMMODERATE GRIEF. 283 

ners and public customs. Something is to be 
given to custom, something to fame, to nature, 
and to civilities, and to the honor of the de- 
ceased friends ; for that man is esteemed to die 
miserable for whom no friend or relative sheds 
a tear or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die 
a dry death, but am not very desirous to have 
a dry funeral. Some showers sprinkled upon 
my grave would do well and comely; and a 
soft shower to turn those flowers into a spring- 
ing memory or a fair rehearsal, that I may not 
go forth of my doors as my servants carry the 
entrails of beasts. 

But that which is to be faulted in this partic- 
ular is when the grief is immoderate and un- 
reasonable ; and Paula Romana deserved to 
have felt the weight of St. Hierom's severe 
reproof, when at the death of every of her 
children she almost wept herself into her 
grave. But it is worse yet when people, by 
an ambitious and a pompous sorrow, and by 
ceremonies invented for the ostentation of their 
grief, fill heaven and earth with exclamations, 
and grow troublesome because their friend is 
happy or themselves want his company. It is 
certainly a sad thing in nature to see a friend 
trembling with a palsy, or scorched with fevers, 
or dried up like a potsherd with immoderate 
heats, and rolling upon his uneasy bed without 
sleep, which cannot be invited with music, or 



284 THE EPHESIAN MATRON. 

pleasant murmurs, or a decent stillness : noth- 
ing but the servants of cold death, poppy and 
weariness, can tempt the eyes to let their cur- 
tains down, and then they sleep only to taste 
of death, and make an essay of the shades be- 
low : and yet we weep not here. The period 
and opportunity for tears we choose when our 
friend is fallen asleep, when he hath laid his 
neck upon the lap of his mother, and let his 
head down to be raised up to heaven. This 
grief is ill-placed and indecent. But many 
times it is worse ; and it hath been observed 
that those greater and stormy passions do so 
spend the whole stock of grief that they pres- 
ently admit a comfort and contrary affection ; 
while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes 
on to its period with expectation and the dis- 
tances of a just time. 



THE EPHESIAN MATRON. 

HPHE Ephesian woman, that the soldier told 
■*■ of in Petronius, was the talk of all the town, 
and the rarest example of a dear affection to 
her husband. She descended with the corpse 
into the vault, and there being attended with 
her maiden, resolved to weep to death, or die 
with famine or a distempered sorrow ; from 



THE EPHESIAN MATRON. 285 

which resolution nor his nor her friends, nor 
the reverence of the principal citizens, who 
used the entreaties of their charity and their 
power, could persuade her. But a soldier that 
watched seven dead bodies hanging upon trees 
just over against this monument, crept in, and 
awhile stared upon the silent and comely dis- 
orders of the sorrow ; and having let the won- 
der awhile breathe out at each other's eyes, at 
last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine, 
with purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed 
himself with that sad prettiness. His pity and 
first draught of wine made him bold and curi- 
ous to try if the maid would drink ; who, hav- 
ing many hours since felt her resolution faint 
as her wearied body, took his kindness ; and 
the light returned into her eyes, and danced 
like boys in a festival ; and fearing lest the per- 
tinaciousness of her mistress's sorrows should 
cause her evil to revert, or her shame to ap- 
proach, assayed whether she would endure to 
hear an argument to persuade her to drink and 
live. The violent passion had laid all her 
spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid 
found them willing to be gathered into order at 
the arrest of any new object, being weary 
of the first, of which, like leeches, they had 
sucked their fill, till they fell down and burst. 
The weeping woman took her cordial, and was 
not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier 



286 THE EP BE SI AN MATRON. 

talk. And he was so pleased with the change, 
that he, who first loved the silence of the sor- 
row, was more in love with the music of her 
returning voice, especially which himself had 
strung and put in tune ; and the man began 
to talk amorously, and the woman's weak head 
and heart were soon possessed with a little 
wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in 
love ; and that very night, in the morning of 
her passion, in the grave of her husband, in 
the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral 
garments, married her new and stranger guest. 
For so the wild foragers of Lybia being 
spent with heat, and dissolved by the too fond 
kisses of the sun, do melt with their common 
fires, and die with faintness, and descend with 
motions slow and unable to the little brooks 
that descend from heaven in the wilderness ; 
and when they drink, they return into the 
vigor of a new life, and contract strange mar- 
riages ; and the lioness is courted by a panther, 
and she listens to his love, and conceives a 
monster that all men call unnatural, and the 
daughter of an equivocal passion and of a sud- 
den refreshment. And so also was it in the 
cave at Epliesus ; for by this time the soldier 
began to think it was fit he should return to 
his watch, and observe the dead bodies he had 
in charm' ; but when he ascended from his 
mourning bridal chamber, he found that one of 



THE EPHESIAN MATRON. 287 

the bodies was stolen by the friends of the 
dead, and that he was fallen into an evil con- 
dition, because by the laws of Ephesus his 
body was to be fixed in the place of it. The 
poor man returns to his woman, cries out bit- 
terly, and in her presence resolves to die to 
prevent his death, and in secret to prevent his 
shame. But now the woman's love was raging 
like her former sadness, and grew witty, and 
she comforted her soldier, and persuaded him 
to live, lest by losing him, who had brought 
her from death and a more grievous sorrow, 
she should return to her old solemnities of dy- 
ing, and lose her honor for a dream, or the 
reputation of her constancy without the change 
and satisfaction of an enjoyed love. The man 
would fain have lived, if it had been possible ; 
and she found out this way for him : that he 
should take the body of her first husband, 
whose funeral she had so strangely mourned, 
and put it upon the gallows in the place of the 
stolen thief. He did so, and escaped the pres- 
ent danger, to possess a love which might 
change as violently as her grief had done. 

But so have I seen a crowd of disordered 
people rush violently and in heaps till their 
utmost border was restrained by a wall, or had 
spent the fury of their first fluctuation and wa- 
tery progress, and by and by it returned to the 
contrary with the same earnestness, only be- 



288 EDUCATION. 

cause it was violent and ungoverned. A rag- 
ing passion is this crowd, which, when it is not 
under discipline and the conduct of reason, and 
the proportions of temperate humanity, runs 
passionately the way it happens, and by and 
by as greedily to another side, being swayed 
by its own weight, and driven anywhither by 
chance, in all its pursuits having no rule but 
to do all it can, and spend itself in haste, and 
expire with some shame and much indecency. 



EDUCATION. 

OTHERWISE do fathers, and otherwise do 
mothers handle their children. These 
soften them with kisses and imperfect noises, 
with the pap and breast-milk of soft endear- 
ments ; they rescue them from tutors, and snatch 
them from discipline ; they desire to keep them 
fat and warm, and their feet dry, and their 
bellies full ; and then the children govern and 
cry, and prove fools and troublesome, so long 
as the feminine republic does endure. But 
fathers, because they design to have their chil- 
dren wise and valiant, apt for counsel or for 
arms, send them to severe governments, and 
tie them to study, to hard labor, and afflictive 
contingencies. They rejoice when the bold 



EDUCATION. 289 

boy strikes a lion with his hunting-spear, and 
shrinks not when the beast comes to affright 
his early courage. Softness is for slaves and 
beasts, for minstrels and useless persons, for 
su 2h who cannot ascend higher than the state 
of a fair ox, or a servant entertained for vainer 
offices ; but the man that designs his son for 
nobler employments, to honors and to triumphs, 
to consular dignities and presidencies of coun- 
cils, loves to see him pale with study, or pant- 
ing with labor, hardened with sufferance, or 
eminent by dangers. 

And so God dresses us for heaven. He 
loves to see us struggling with a disease, and 
resisting the devil, and contesting against the 
weaknesses of nature, and against hope to be- 
lieve in hope, resigning ourselves to God's will, 
praying him to choose for us, and dying in all 
things but faith and its blessed consequents ; 
and the danger and the resistance shall endear 
the office. For so have I known the boisterous 
northwind pass through the yielding air, which 
opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by 
entertaining it with easy compliance in all the 
regions of its reception ; but when the same 
breath of heaven hath been checked with the 
stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of a 
wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and 
made the highest branches stoop and make a 

smooth path for it on the top of all its glories. 
19 



290 ADVANTAGES OF SICKNESS. 



ADVANTAGES OF SICKNESS. 

[" CONSIDER one of the great felicities of 
A heaven consists in an immunity from sin. 
Then we shall love God without mixtures of 
malice ; then we shall enjoy without envy ; 
then we shall see fuller vessels running over 
with glory, and crowned with bigger circles ; 
and this we shall behold without spilling from 
our eyes (those vessels of joy and grief) any 
sign of anger, trouble, or any repining spirit. 
Our passions shall be pure, our charity without 
fear, our desire without lust, our possessions all 
our own ; and all in the inheritance of Jesus, 
in the richest soil of God's eternal kingdom. 
Now half of this reason which makes heaven 
so happy by being innocent, is also in the state 
of sickness, making the sorrows of old age 
smooth, and the groans of a sick heart apt to 
be joined to the music of angels ; and though 
they sound harsh to our untuned ears and dis- 
composed organs, yet those accents must needs 
be in themselves excellent which God loves to 
hear, and esteems them as prayers and argu- 
ments of pity, instruments of mercy and grace, 
and preparatives to glory. 

In sickness the soul begins to dress herself 
for immortality. At first, she unties the strings 
of vanity that made her upper garment cleave 



ADVANTAGES OF SICKNESS. 291 

to the world and sit uneasy. First, she puts 
off the light and fantastic summer robe of lust 
and wanton appetite. 

Next to this, the soul by the help of sick- 
ness knocks off the fetters of pride and vainer 
complacencies. Then she draws the curtains 
and stops the light from coming in, and takes 
the pictures down, — those fantastic images of 
self-love, and gay remembrances of vain opin- 
ion and popular noises. Then the spirit stoops 
into the sobrieties of humble thoughts, and 
feels corruption chiding the forwardness of 
fancy, and allaying the vapors of conceit and 
factious opinions. For humility is the soul's 
grave, into which she enters, not to die, but to 
meditate and inter some of its troublesome ap- 
pendages. There she sees the dust, and feels 
the dishonor of the body, and reads the register 
of all its sad adherences ; and then she lays by 
all her vain reflections, beating upon her crys- 
tal and pure mirror from the fancies of strength 
and beauty, and little decayed prettinesses of 
the body. 

Next to these, as the soul is still undressing, 
she takes off the roughness of her great and 
little angers and animosities, and receives the 
oil of mercies and smooth forgiveness, fair in- 
terpretations and gentle answers, designs of 
reconcilement and Christian atonement, in their 
places. The temptations of this state, such I 



292 ADVANTAGES OF SICKNESS. 

mean which are proper to it, are little and 
inconsiderable ; the man is apt to chide a ser- 
vant too bitterly, and to be discontented with 
his nurse or not satisfied with his physician, 
and he rests uneasily, and (poor man !) nothing 
can please him ; and indeed these little inde- 
cencies must be cured and stopped lest they 
run into an inconvenience. But sickness is in 
this particular a little image of the state of 
blessed souls, or of Adam's early morning in 
paradise, free from the troubles of lust and 
violences of anger, and the intricacies of ambi- 
tion or the restlessness of covetousness. For 
though a man may carry all these along with 
him into his sickness, yet there he will not find 
them ; and in despite of all his own malice, his 
soul shall find some rest from laboring in the 
galleys and baser captivity of sin. 

At the first address and presence of sickness, 
stand still and arrest thy spirit that it may, 
without amazement or affright, consider that 
this was that thou lookedst for and wort always 
certain should happen, and that now thou art 
to enter into the actions of a new religion, the 
agony of a strange constitution ; but at no 
hand suffer thy spirits to be dispersed with fear 
or wildness of thought, but stay their looseness 
and dispersion by a serious consideration of the 
present and future employment. For so doth 
the Lybian lion, spying the fierce huntsman; 



DAILY PRATER. 293 

he first beats himself with the strokes of his 
tail and curls up his spirits, making them strong 
with union and recollection, till, being struck 
with a Mauritanian spear, he rushes forth into 
his defence and noblest contention ; and either 
escapes into the secrets of his own dwelling, or 
else dies the bravest of the forest. Every 
man, when shot with an arrow from God's 
quiver, must then draw in all the auxiliaries 
of reason, and know that then is the time to 
try his strength and to reduce the words of his 
religion into action, and consider that, if he 
behaves himself weakly and timorously, he suf- 
fers never the less of sickness ; but if he re- 
turns to health, he carries along with him the 
mark of a coward and a fool ; and if he de- 
scends into his grave, he enters into the state 
of the faithless and unbelievers. Let him set 
his heart firm upon this resolution : " I must 
bear it inevitably, and I will, by God's grace, 
do it nobly." 



DAILY PRAYER. 



OHORT passes, quick ejections, concise forms 
^ and remembrances, holy breathings, prayers 
like little posies, may be sent forth without 
number on every occasion, and God will note 



294 TOLERATION. 

them in his book. But all that have a care to 
walk with God fill their vessels more largely 
as soon as they rise, before they begin the 
work of the day, and before they lie down 
again at night ; which is to observe what the 
Lord appointed in the Levitical ministry, a 
morning and an evening lamb to be laid upon 
the altar. So with them that are not stark 
irreligious, prayer is the key to open the day 
and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the 
skies drop the early dew and the evening dew 
upon the grass, yet it would not spring and 
grow green by that constant and double fall- 
ing of the dew, unless some great showers at 
certain seasons did supply the rest ; so the 
customary devotion of prayer twice a day is 
the falling of the early and the latter dew ; but 
if you will increase and flourish in the works 
of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes 
and let them fall into a full shower of prayer ; 
choose out the seasons in your own discretion 
when prayer shall overflow like Jordan in the 
time of harvest. 



A 



TOLERATION. 

NY zeal is proper for religion but the zeal 
of the sword and the zeal of anger ; this 



TOLERATION. 295 

is the bitterness of zeal, and it is a certain temp- 
tation to every man against his duty ; for if the 
sword turns preacher and dictates propositions 
by empire instead of arguments, and engraves 
them in men's hearts with a poignard, that it 
shall be death to believe what I innocently and 
ignorantly am persuaded of, it must needs be 
unsafe to " try the spirits," to " try all things," 
to make an inquiry ; and yet without this lib- 
erty no man can justify himself before God or 
man, nor confidently say that his religion is 
best. This is inordination of zeal ; for Christ, 
by reproving St. Peter drawing his sword even 
in the cause of Christ for his sacred and yet 
injured person, teaches us not to use the sword, 
though in the cause of God or for God himself. 
I end with a story which I find in the Jews' 
books. 

When Abraham sat at his tent-door, accord- 
ing to his custom, waiting to entertain stran- 
gers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning 
on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming 
towards him, who was an hundred years of age. 
He received him kindly, washed his feet, pro- 
vided supper, caused him to sit down ; but ob- 
serving that the old man ate, and prayed not, 
nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked 
him why he did not worship the God of heaven. 
The old man told him that he worshipped the 
fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At 



296 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 

which answer Abraham grew so zealously 
angry that he thrust the old man out of his 
tent and exposed him to all the evils of the 
night and an unguarded condition. When the 
old man was gone, God called to Abraham 
and asked him where the stranger was. He 
replied, I thrust him away because he did not 
worship thee. God answered him, I have 
suffered him these hundred years, although he 
dishonored me ; and couldst thou not endure 
him one night when he gave thee no trouble ? 
Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched 
him back again, and gave him hospitable enter- 
tainment and wise instruction. Go thou and 
do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded 
by the God of Abraham. 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 

HTHAT God is present in all places, that he 
-*- sees every action, hears all discourses, and 
understands every thought, is no strange thing 
to a Christian ear who hath been taught this 
doctrine, not only by right reason and the con- 
sent of all the wise men in the world, but also 
by God himself in holy Scripture. God is 
wholly in every place, included in no place, not 
bound with cords, (except those of love,) not 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 297 

divided into parts nor changeable into several 
shapes, filling heaven and earth with his pres- 
ent power and with his never absent nature. 
So that we may imagine God to be as the air 
and the sea, and we all enclosed in his circle, 
wrapt up in the lap of his infinite nature ; and 
we can no more be removed from the presence 
of God than from our own being. 

God is present by his essence, which because 
it is infinite cannot be contained within the 
limits of any place ; and because he is of an 
essential purity and spiritual nature, he cannot 
be undervalued by being supposed present in 
the places of unnatural uncleanness ; because 
as the sun, reflecting upon the mud of strands 
and shores, is unpolluted in its beams, so is God 
not dishonored when we suppose him in every 
of his creatures, and in every part of every 
one of them, and is still as unmixed with any 
unhandsome adherence as is the soul in the 
bowels of the body. 

God is everywhere present by his power. 
He rolls the orbs of heaven with his hand, he 
fixes the earth with his foot, he guides all the 
creatures with his eye, and refreshes them with 
his influence ; he makes the powers of hell to 
shake with his terrors, and binds the devils with 
his word, and throws them out with his com- 
mand, and sends the angels on embassies with 
his decrees ; he hardens the joints of infants, 



298 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 

and confirms the bones when they are fashioned 
beneath secretly in the heart. He it is that 
assists at the numerous productions of fishes ; 
and there is not one hollowness in the bottom 
of the sea but he shows himself to be Lord of 
it, by sustaining there the creatures that come 
to dwell in it ; and in the wilderness, the bit- 
tern and the stork, the dragon and the satyr, 
the unicorn and the elk, live upon his provisions 
and revere his power and feel the force of his 
almightiness. 

God is, by grace and benediction, specially 
present in holy places, and in the solemn as- 
semblies of his servants. If holy people meet 
in grots and dens of the earth when persecu- 
tion or a public necessity disturbs the public 
order, circumstance, and convenience, God fails 
not to come thither to them ; but God is also 
by the same or greater reason present there 
where they meet ordinarily. 

God is especially present in the hearts of 
his people by his Holy Spirit ; and indeed the 
hearts of holy men are temples in the truth of 
things, and in type and shadow they are heaven 
itself; for God reigns in the hearts of his 
servants ; there is his kingdom. The power 
of grace hath subdued all his enemies; there 
is his power. They serve him night and day, 
and give him thanks and praise ; that is his 
glory. This is the religion and worship of 



TEE PRESENCE OF GOD. 299 

God in the temple. The temple itself is the 
heart of man. 

God is especially present in the consciences 
of all persons, good and bad, by way of testi- 
mony and judgment; that is, he is there a 
remembrancer to call our actions to mind, a 
witness to bring them to judgment, and a judge 
to acquit or condemn. And although this 
manner of presence is in this life after the 
manner of this life, that is, imperfect, and we 
forget many actions of our lives, yet the great- 
est changes of our state of grace or sin, our 
most considerable actions, are always present, 
like capital letters to an aged and dim eye ; 
and at the day of judgment, God shall draw 
aside the cloud and manifest this manner of his 
presence more notoriously, and make it appear 
that he was an observer of our very thoughts ; 
and that he only laid those things by which, 
because we covered with dust and negligence, 
were not then discerned. But when we are 
risen from our dust and imperfections, they all 
appear plain and legible. 

Now the consideration of this great truth is 
of a very universal use in the whole course of 
the life of a Christian. All the consequents 
and effects of it are universal. He that re- 
members that God stands a witness and a 
judge, beholding every secrecy, besides his 
impiety, must have put on impudence if he be 



800 THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 

not much restrained in his temptation to sin. 
He is to be feared in public, he is to be feared 
in private : if you go forth, he spies you ; if 
you go in, he sees you; when you light the 
candle, he observes you ; when you put it out, 
then also God marks you. Be sure that while 
you are in his sight, you behave yourself as 
becomes so holy a presence. But if you will 
sin, retire yourself wisely, and go where God 
cannot see ; for nowhere else can you be safe. 
And certainly, if men would always actually 
consider and really esteem this truth, that God 
is the great eye of the world, always watching 
over our actions, and an ever-open ear to hear 
all our words, and an unwearied arm ever lifted 
up to crush a sinner into ruin, it would be the 
readiest way in the world to make sin to cease 
from among the children of men, and for men 
to approach to the blessed state of the saints 
in heaven, who cannot sin, for they always walk 
in the presence and behold the face of God. 

Let everything you see represent to your 
spirit the presence, the excellency, and the 
power of God, and let your conversation with 
the creatures lead you unto the Creator ; for 
so shall your actions be done more frequently 
with an actual eye to God's presence by your 
often seeing him in the glass of the creation. 
In the face of the sun you may see God's 
beauty ; in the fire you may feel his heat 



THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 301 

warming; in the water his gentleness to re- 
fresh you : he it is that comforts your spirits 
when you have taken cordials ; it is the dew of 
heaven that makes your field give you bread ; 
and the breasts of God are the bottles that 
minister drink to your necessities. 

In your retirement make frequent colloquies 
or short discoursings between God and thy 
own soul. " Seven times a day do I praise 
thee, and in the night season also I thought 
upon thee while I was waking." So did David; 
and every act of complaint or thanksgiving, 
every act of rejoicing or of mourning, every 
petition and every return of the heart in these 
intercourses, is a going to God, an appearing in 
his presence, and a representing him present 
to thy spirit and to thy necessity. And this 
was long since by a spiritual person called 
" a building to God a chapel in our heart." 
It reconciles Martha's employment with Mary's 
devotion, charity and religion, the necessities 
of our calling and the employments of devo- 
tion. For thus, in the midst of the works of 
your trade, you may retire into your chapel 
(your heart), and converse with God by fre- 
quent addresses and returns. 

Let us remember that God is in us, and that 
we are in him. We are his workmanship, let 
us not deface it ; we are in his presence, let us 
not pollute it by unholy and impure actions. 



302 QUIET RELIGION. 

God is in every creature ; be cruel towards 
none, neither abuse any by intemperance. Re- 
member that the creatures, and every member 
of thy own body, is one of the lesser cabinets 
and receptacles of God. They are such which 
God hath blessed with his presence, hallowed 
by his touch, and separated from unholy use by 
making them belong to his dwelling. 

He walks as in the presence of God that 
converses with him in frequent prayer and 
frequent communion, that runs to him in all 
his necessities, that asks counsel of him in all 
his doubtings, that opens all his wants to him, 
that weeps before him for his sins, that asks 
remedy and support for his weakness, that fears 
him as a Judge, reverences him as a Lord, 
obeys him as a Father, and loves him as a 
Patron. 



QUIET RELIGION. 

TT is not altogether inconsiderable to observe 
■*■ that the holy Virgin came to a great perfec- 
tion and state of piety by a few, and those 
modest and even, exercises and external ac- 
tions. St. Paul travelled over the world, 
preached to the Gentiles, disputed against the 
Jews, confounded heretics, wrote excellently 
learned letters, suffered dangers, injuries, af- 



QUIET RELIGION. 303 

fronts, and persecutions to the height of won- 
der, and by these violences of life, action, and 
patience obtained the crown of an excellent 
religion and devotion. But the holy Virgin, 
although she was engaged sometimes in an 
active life, and in the exercise of an ordinary 
and small economy and government, or min- 
istries of a family, yet she arrived to her per- 
fections by the means of a quiet and silent 
piety, the internal actions of love, devotion, 
and contemplation; and instructs us that not 
only those who have opportunity and* powers 
of a magnificent religion, or a pompous charity, 
or miraculous conversion of souls, or assiduous 
and effectual preachings, or exterior demon- 
strations of corporal mercy, shall have the 
greatest crowns, and the addition of degrees 
and accidental rewards ; but the silent affec- 
tions, the splendors of an internal devotion, 
the unions of love, humility, and obedience, 
the daily offices of prayer and praises sung to 
God, the acts of faith and fear, of patience and 
meekness, of hope and reverence, repentance 
and charity, and those graces which walk in a 
veil and silence, make great ascents to God, 
and as sure progress to favor and a crown, as 
the more ostentatious and laborious exercises 
of a more solemn religion. No man needs to 
complain of want of power or opportunities for 
religious perfections : a devout woman in her 



304 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 

closet, praying with much zeal and affections 
for the conversion of souls, is in the same order 
to a " shining like the stars in glory," as he 
who, by excellent discourses, puts it into a 
more forward disposition to be actually per- 
formed. And possibly her prayers obtained 
energy and force to my sermon, and made the 
ground fruitful, and the seed spring up to life 
eternal. Many times God is present in the 
still voice and private retirements of a quiet 
religion, and the constant spiritualities of an 
ordinary life ; when the loud and impetuous 
winds, and the shining fires of more laborious 
and expensive actions, are profitable to others 
only, like a tree of balsam, distilling precious 
liquor for others, not for its own use. 



THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 

TT is reported in the Bohemian story that St. 
A Wenceslaus, their king, one winter night 
going to his devotions, in a remote church, 
barefooted in the snow and sharpness of une- 
qual and pointed ice, his servant Podavivus, 
who waited upon his master's piety and en- 
deavored to imitate his affections, began to 
faint through the violence of the snow and 
cold, till the king commanded him to follow 



THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 305 

him, and set his feet in the same footsteps 
which his feet should mark for him : the ser- 
vant did so, and either fancied a cure or found 
one ; for he followed his prince, helped forward 
with shame and zeal to his imitation and by 
the forming footsteps for him in the snow. In 
the same manner does the blessed Jesus ; for, 
smce our way is troublesome, obscure, full of 
objection and danger, apt to be mistaken and 
to affright our industry, he commands us to 
mark his footsteps, to tread where his feet have 
stood, and not only invites us forward by the 
argument of his example, but he hath trodden 
down much of the difficulty, and made the way 
easier and fit for our feet. For he knows our 
infirmities, and himself hath felt their experi- 
ence in all things but in the neighborhoods of 
sin ; and therefore he hath proportioned a way 
and a path to our strengths and capacities, and, 
like Jacob, hath marched softly and in even- 
ness with the children and the cattle, to enter- 
tain us by the comforts of his company and 
the influences of a perpetual guide. 

He that gives alms to the poor, takes Jesus 
by the hand; he that patiently endures injuries 
and affronts, helps him to bear his cross; he 
that comforts his brother in affliction, gives an 
amiable kiss of peace to Jesus ; he that bathes 
his own and his neighbor's sins in tears of 
penance and compassion, washes his Master's 
20 



306 THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. 

feet : we lead Jesus into the recesses of our 
heart by holy meditations ; and we enter into 
his heart when we express him in our actions : 
for so the apostle says, " He that is in Christ, 
walks as he also walked." But thus the actions 
of our life relate to him by way of worship and 
religion ; but the use is admirable and effectual 
when our actions refer to him as to our copy, 
and we transcribe the original to the life. 



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